Richard Nonas

Richard Nonas was born in 1936. He lives and works in New York.

Richard Nonas was an ethnologist for 10 years, living with the indians in the Sonora Desert in Mexico. He developed his creative approach in the 1970's, and was a member of the group "Anarchitecture" with Gordon Matta-Clark and Richard Serra.

He has had many solo exhibitions in various galleries and museums: at the Georgia State University Art Gallery, Atlanta, in 1982; at Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, in 1988; at the Ace Gallery, New York, in 1991; at the Hubert Winter Gallery, Vienna, in 1993; Le Consortium, Centre d'Art, Dijon, in 1993; at MAMCO, Geneva, in 1996; and at the Curt Marcus Gallery, New York, in 2001.

Nonas uses his experience as an ethnologist in his creative process: he searches to understand the complexity of the world that surrounds him.

Nonas is a sculptor of space, inventing a new vocabulary for each work of art; the work is minimalist, composed of geometric forms, in wood or metal, that he arranges in the space. It is a work of "combinations"; the artist makes complex relationships with these elements, creating tension between them.

His sculptures use an abstract language that demand a new reading of the space with each viewing.