For his text for the catalog accompanying Kricke's first solo exhibition in the USA in 1961, Peter Selz, curator at the Museum of Modern Art, found the following words: "The Museum of Modern Art is happy to present a selection of sculpture and drawings by Norbert Kricke [..]. Kricke is already well established in Europe but has thus far not received the recognition he deserves in New York." Selz had already recognized at the time that Kricke's intensive sculptural exploration of space and time gave him a prominent role in post-war modernist sculpting. Inspired by the Constructivist sculpture around Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, Kricke developed a language of form in his unique pieces that has remained unique to this day. In the 1950s, Kricke first began to explore the dynamics of the line through the course of a single bent wire. For these early, mostly colored works, which for their elongate lines seemed to anticipate later works of the American Fred Sandback, the title “Raumplastik" (Spatial Sculpture) was already in use. From the mid-1950s onward, Kricke began to work with bundles of lines, which he would continuously modify until the end of the decade - as is also the case with our large-size "Raumplastik" - up to the point where he attained filigree line constructions that consist of several parts and which are characterized by unique polyphonic aesthetics. Bundles of stainless steel rods soldered together reach out into space on all sides, tapering into the finest ramifications. Kricke's gleaming creations appear filigree and weightless, filling the space like rays of light and thus making an extremely progressive contribution to post-war modernist sculpture. Just how revolutionary and groundbreaking Kricke's work is, is also demonstrated by the fact that a description of his own work by the American minimalist artist Fred Sandback, who is a generation younger, could hardly be more apt to describe Kricke's sculptural work: "Still sculpture, albeit less dense, with an ambivalence between exterior space and interior space. A drawing that can be inhabited." (Fred Sandback, Here and Now, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz 2005). Kricke liberated sculpture from closed form, allowed the fine lines of abstract drawing to become spatial and three-dimensionally visible, and uses minimalist, reduced means to create a spatial interaction and presence that for its timeless modern aesthetics continues to fascinate and inspire observers up to this day. [JS]