Richard Nonas, Richard Nonas (hand signed by Richard Nonas), 2004

Richard Nonas

Richard Nonas (hand signed by Richard Nonas), 2004

Softcover monograph (hand signed by Richard Nonas)

Hand signed by Richard Nonas for the present owner on the title page

8 × 6 × 1 inches

Unframed

Provenance:
hand signed by Richard Nonas for the present owner in 2017

Hand signed by Richard Nonas for the present owner in 2017 on the title page.

Book information:
Publisher: Charta, CA, 2004
English and Italian; Softcover; 200 pages with 84 illustration including 34 in color

Publisher's blurb:

A trained anthropologist, Richard Nonas has spent long periods among the Canadian Inuit and in the deserts of Mexico. An environmental sculptor, Nonas returned to Italy after an almost 30-year absence; there he worked with natural materials such as wood, stone and metal, and taught 24 young international artists. This book documents the students' and teacher's work.

About Richard Nonas:
Richard Nonas (January 3, 1936 – May 11, 2021) was an American anthropologist and post-minimalist sculptor. He lived and worked in New York City. Nonas' Post-minimalist sculptural practice addressed notions of space, place, and deep time. His work from the 1970s involves experimentation with modes of presentation as well as material experimentation in which he used granite curbstones, linear wooden beams, and other raw materials. This work has been described as "talismanic objects" that create impressions of spiritual, emotional, and philosophical notions and meanings. Nonas' oeuvre is known for modular sculptural installations, primarily in stone or wood, in interior and exterior settings. Carter Ratcliff wrote that "we cannot grasp a Nonas sculpture simply by thinking about it. His works call for intuitive, empathetic responses."

His work has been compared to that of Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, and Dorothea Rockburne. His work has been exhibited 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. His work was featured in the 1973 Whitney Biennial. Courtney Fiske has written that Nonas treated "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." Joyce Beckenstein writing for the magazine Sculpture, described 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."

Nonas stated that his travels impacted on his artistic practice, "What I realized in Mexico was that there are physical places, spaces deeply imbued with human meaning, that can have a great deal of power over us, places that affect us in an extremely worldly way." He described his sculptures as ways to define his own "existent reality, the reality I try to describe to you.