Richard Nonas was an American sculptor born in New York on January 3, 1936, and died in the same city on May 11, 2021.

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Richard Nonas worked as an ethnologist for ten years, living with Indians in Mexico's Sonora desert. In the 1970s, he developed an artistic practice, and was a member of the "Anarchitecture" group with Gordon Matta Clarck and Richard Serra.

Many museums and galleries have hosted solo exhibitions by Richard Nonas, including Georgia State University Art Gallery (Atlanta) 1982, Ace Contemporary Exhibitions (Los Angeles) 1988, Ace Gallery (New York) 1991, Galerie Hubert Winter (Vienna) 1993, Le Consortium, center d'art (Dijon) 1993, MAMCO (Geneva) 1996, Curt Marcus Gallery (New York) 2001.

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Richard Nonas pursues his experience as an ethnologist through his artistic approach, since his aim is always to understand the complexity of the world around him.
Richard Nonas is a sculptor of space, inventing a vocabulary for each work of art, composed of minimalist geometric forms in wood or metal, which he arranges in space.

It's a work of "assemblage", the artist organizing complex relationships between these elements, creating tensions between them. Richard Nonas's sculptures use an abstract language, each time proposing a new reading of space.

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At Saché, Richard Nonas has developed a series of works linked to the studio space, which is largely open to the outdoors and its natural surroundings, creating a particular material and emotional space. Richard Nonas has used slate, devising tools and a vocabulary around this new material in his work. The use of black slate is a reference to the architecture of the region, and is also a material very much present in the construction of the studio. Following his residency at Saché, Richard Nonas exhibited at the Centre de Création Contemporaine in Tours.

 

 

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