Stephen Antonakos, 
Untitled (F #1), 1988
Colored pencils on vellum
Unframed: 19 x 15 inches (48.26 × 38.10 cm)
Framed: 25 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches (64.77 × 54.61 cm)

Courtesy of Stephen Antonakos Studio LLC

Selected by Olga Valle Tetkowski

Stephen Antonakos (Laconia, Greece 1926 — New York 2013) emigrated to NYC with his family in 1930. After the army, he established his first studio in the city’s fur district. From 1963 onward, he worked and lived in SoHo, where the studio continues to work with his legacy.

Antonakos’s work with neon since 1960 has lent the medium new perceptual and formal meaning in hundreds of gallery and museum exhibitions, first in New York and then internationally. His use of spare complete and incomplete geometric neons forms ranged from indoor 2-D and 3-D Direct installations to painted Canvases, Panels, Walls, Rooms, and Chapels. Starting in the 1970s, he made very large outdoor architectural installations and began his important history in Greece. These years also saw the beginning of more than 55 large, architecturally-sited permanent Public Works. These commissions continued in the USA, Europe, and Japan through 2011.

It is impossible to separate light and space. Antonakos conceived his work always as real things in real spaces — no images, no words — abstract forms placed in relation to the architecture and space of their site — its scale, proportions, and character. He said the space contains the art and the viewer, intending it to be seen without reference outside the immediate visual and kinetic experience of space, form, and color.

From his earliest years and throughout his history of all the various directions of his work, he made drawings — with different materials and of different scale, often in series. Other major practices include Collages, the conceptual Packages, Travel Collages, Artist’s Books, silver and white Reliefs, innovative Prints, and, since 2010, individual and serial Gold Works.