Richard Nonas
Richard Nonas (1936–2021) was an American anthropologist who became a leading post-minimalist sculptor in New York. He studied literature and anthropology at the University of Michigan, Lafayette College, Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina, and did fieldwork with Native American communities in Northern Ontario and in northern Mexico and southern Arizona before turning to art. His sculptures use simple materials like granite curbstones and wooden beams to create modular installations that explore space, place, and time. They are often described as talismanic objects that invite personal, emotional, and philosophical readings. Critics compare him to Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, and Dorothea Rockburne, and he treated space as a material in his work, aiming for a sense of timelessness and self-containment. He showed widely in the U.S.—including the 1973 Whitney Biennial, and shows at MoMA PS1, the Art Institute of Chicago, MASS MoCA, and the Walker Art Museum—and internationally at Documenta 6 and museums in France, Switzerland, and Sweden. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. Public art includes works for the Museum of Grenoble (1994) and the North Dakota Museum of Art (1990s sculpture garden), and a permanent installation in Digne-les-Bains, France, in 2012. His works are in the collections of the Walker Art Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and Fondazione Ratti. Nonas believed travel and places with deep human meaning—especially in Mexico—shaped his art, and he saw his sculptures as a way to define his own reality and invite viewers to respond.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:18 (CET).