Richard Nonas

Nonas was educated in literature and anthropology at University of Michigan, Lafayette College, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina.[2] 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.[3]

Nonas is known for modular sculptural installations, primarily in stone or wood, in interior and exterior settings.[4][5] Carter Ratcliff wrote that "we cannot grasp a Nonas sculpture simply by thinking about it. His works call for intuitive, empathetic responses."[6]

His work has been compared to Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, and Dorothea Rockburne.[4] 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.[7][8] His work was featured in the 1973 Whitney Biennial.[9] Courtney Fiske has written that Nonas treats "space as a material", in 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."[10] 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.[11]

He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1974.[12]

Nonas produced permanent public art works for the Museum of Grenoble, Transi West (for 36 Albanians ...), 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.[13] In 2012, at the abandoned village, Vière et les Moyennes Montagnes, Digne-les-Bains, France, he create a permanent installation.[2]

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.[14][15][16] His work is also included in the permanent collection of the Fondazione Ratti, Italy.[2]

• 1998 Richard Nonas 1970-1988, Art and Architecture Books of the Twentieth Century.
• 1985 Kuspit, D. and Rosenzweig, P., Richard Nonas, Sculpture, Parts to anything, Nassau Country Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York, 1985.