Richard Nonas (1936–2021) studied literature and then social anthropology at the University of Michigan, Lafayette College, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina. Following his education, Nonas worked as an anthropologist for ten years, conducting fieldwork with American Indians in Northern Ontario, Canada, and in Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona. He turned to sculpture in the mid-1960s at the age of 30. His anthropological work left a deep imprint that influenced his sculptural practice and his engagement with the perception of space. Through a Minimalist vocabulary, Nonas developed a body of sculpture that explored the issue of place.

In the 1970s, Nonas was part of an intrepid group of artists and curators who found alternative places to exhibit. His work involved the alteration of environments and repeated geometric forms, and he came to see sculpture and space as interdependent carriers of profound philosophical and emotional meanings. Many of his works – made of such materials as timbers, linear beams, granite kerbstones and steel planes – rest directly on the ground and function less as formal aesthetic objects than as spatial markers. His forms serve to interrupt space, calling attention to the non-specificity of the forms on the one hand, while creating a charged sense of space on the other.

The artist exhibited extensively in the US and abroad, creating both small- and large-scale works, indoors and out. He also wrote widely on the culturally dependent intellectual and emotional meanings of sculpture, space and place. He was the subject of several museum and institutional exhibitions, including: FiveMyles, Brooklyn (2020–21); Musée Gassendi, Digne-les-Bains, France (2019); MAMCO Genève, Switzerland (2019); ‘T’ Space, Rhinebeck, New York (2018); the Art Institute of Chicago (2017); MoMA PS1, New York (2016); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2016); and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2012), among others.