Francesc Torres came to artistic practice through his research on the expressive possibilities of the word and material investigations of language. In the late 1960s, he presented a series of object-based works that shared in that period’s concern for putting an end to the myth of artistic subjectivity, in an approximation to minimalism. In this context, he incorporated notions of the prototype and fabrication, formal research and engineering. At the same time, Torres was interested in the work of art to the degree it could be construed as action: the poem exists when it is read, and the work exists when it is perceived. Basing himself on this idea, in 1968 and 1969 he proposed a series of “cut-out” sculptures that could be assembled as if they were mechanical devices. Produced with cardboard, Torres built objects to spell out words and prototypes to elaborate poems.