Richard Nonas

Painted Wood  

1998 Signed and Dated on Verso

6 ¼ x 4 x 2 inches

16 × 10 × 5 cm

Richard Nonas (January 3, 1936 – May 11, 2021) was an American anthropologist and post-minimalist sculptor. He lived and worked in New York City and was a pioneering figure in the downtown New York art scene of the 1960s and 70s. He incorporated natural and industrial materials such as wood, stone and steel into his work. After turning to sculpture in the mid-1960s, he exhibited alongside artists such as Richard Serra and Gordon Matta-Clark, and was included in the seminal 1971 exhibition Under the Brooklyn Bridge. His arrangements of found materials such as boulders, railroad ties and beams were constructed in public locations, both accessible and remote, around the globe. Their sparse settings, combined with the solid, monolithic quality of his materials, underscore Nonas’ interest in the emotional experience of an environment

Nonas exhibited his work widely throughout the world, including shows in the U.S. at MoMA PS1, Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago,  MASS MoCA, Walker Art Museum, among many others. Internationally, his work has been shown at Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany; the Musée d’art de Saint-Etienne, France; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Lund Museum of Art, Lund, Sweden; among other venues.

Nonas' work is included in the collections of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 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