Fred Sandback wanted from the beginning to make sculpture, but sculpture with neither volume nor mass, neither interior nor exterior. For more than half his life he succeeded in that impossible-sounding task, solving its riddle with lines in the form of steel wire and acrylic string. He described spaces, constructed perspectives, and demarcated borders, visible and invisible. The drawings on paper collected here, while closely allied to his exhibition work, were seldom mere drafts or working sketches; they are autonomous and self-confident signs.
