Richard Nonas


Richard Nonas is an American anthropologist and post-minimalist sculptor. He lives and works in New York City.

Education

Nonas was educated in literature and anthropology at University of Michigan, Lafayette College, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina. He followed this with field-work studies on Native American sites in Northern Ontario, Canada, and in Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona before becoming a sculptor.

Work

Nonas is known for modular sculptural installations, primarily in stone or wood, in interior and exterior settings. Carter Ratcliff wrote that "we cannot grasp a Nonas sculpture simply by thinking about it. His works call for intuitive, empathetic responses."
His work has been compared to Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, and Dorothea Rockburne. He has shown his work internationally. He created a 300-foot long installation in the U.S. at MassMoca in a one-person exhibition, Richard Nonas: The Man in the Empty Space. His work was featured in the 1973 Whitney Biennial. Courtney Fiske has written that Nonas treats "space as a material", that each work is intended to be a "blunt insertion into the viewer's surrounds. His approach to minimalism not only includes serialiity, but also maintain a sense of self-containment and timelessness." Joyce Beckenstein writing for Sculpture Magazine, describes Nonas' studio as a "Wunderkammer piled high with artifacts and relics as well as past and in-progress works....with the unexpected surprises of an archaeological dig.

Awards and honors

He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1974.

Public artworks

Nonas produced permanent public art works for the Museum of Grenoble, Transi West , 1994; the North Dakota Museum of Art, Granite. In the early 1990s the North Dakota Museum of Art commissioned Nonas to design a sculpture garden and specimen peony garden for the museum. In 2012, at the abandoned village, Vière et les Moyennes Montagnes, Digne-les-Bains, France, he create a permanent installation.

Collections

Nonas' work is included in the collection of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art among others. His work is also included in the permanent collection of the Fondazione Ratti, Italy.