Jack Barrett is pleased to present the first exhibition opening during the centennial year of Stephen Antonakos (1926-2013). Space and Color features Neon Panels and suites of drawings spanning the late 1990s through early 2000s. Throughout his six-decade career, Antonakos stated, “my work is real things in real spaces, no allusions, no language.” He believed that space itself contained both the viewer and the art. Placement is definitive: the elements of a work relate to each other, to the whole, to the wall, and to the surrounding space. 

Stephen Antonakos was born in Laconia, Greece in 1926, and emigrated with his family to New York City in 1930. After serving in the U.S. Army, he established his first studio. From 1963 onward, he lived and worked in SoHo. 

Antonakos is perhaps best known for his large-scale public neon installations and his Neon Panels. Of the latter, poet Nathan Kernan wrote, “I also think of Stephen’s…wall panels, backed by light escaping from around the edges, as holding back light as one would try to hold back time itself…The spiritual aspect to Stephen’s work was always treated with a gentle touch….” [1]

Drawing was a constant practice from Antonakos’s earliest years. In the 1990s, he began using a four-colored pencil, which with his characteristic back-and-forth movements—was sometimes seen as related to Byzantine mosaics. This association was cultural rather than intentional. These drawings led to a more open, spatial, and less contained field of experience in which movement is inescapable. Their relationships to one another and to their wall spaces are essential. 

Through geometry and radiant color, Antonakos invites viewers into a contemplative encounter where light and space converge, reaffirming his enduring belief in art’s capacity to shape experience through direct engagement.

Since 1958, Antonakos’s work has been seen in hundreds of solo and group shows in New York, around the USA, Europe, and Japan. For almost every exhibition, he created new work. Stephen Antonakos: A Retrospective, curated by Katerina Koskina and organized by the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, was presented December 2007- March 2008 at the Benaki Museum Pireos, Athens. Its major catalogue has essays by five art historians. This Retrospective, curated by Robert S. Mattison, was seen in 2008 at the Allentown Art Museum, Allentown PA. Irving Sandler’s comprehensive monograph Antonakos was published in 1999. Large-scale neon installations were exhibited at the Fort Worth Art Museum, 1974; documenta 6, 1977; the Sao Paulo Biennale, 1987; Artec ’89, Nagoya, Japan, 1989; the XLVII Venice Biennale, 1997; the Aeschyleia Festival in Elefsina, 2011 and documenta 14, 2017. Major neons were also exhibited at several Whitney Biennials starting in 1966; and in such institutions as the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; the Loeb Student Center, NYU, NYC, 1967; the Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1968; the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI,1974; the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1974; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 1974; the Lowe Art Museum, Miami, 1980; the Washington Project for the Arts, Wash. DC, 1981; Creative Time, NYC, 1981; the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1982; the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, 1983; the La Jolla MCA,1984; the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis U., Waltham, MA, 1986 and 2000; Artec89, Nagoya, Japan; the National Gallery — Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens, 1992; Harvard’s Carpenter Center, 1992-93; the Fortress of St. George, Rhodes,1993; P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, 1999; the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA,1999; Proscenium, the Neuberger Museum, SUNY, Purchase, NY, 2000, 2018, 2024-2025; the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2001; Lafayette College, Easton, PA, 2004; the Kydoniefs Foundation, Andros, Greece, 2004; the Chapel of St. George, Mystras, Greece, 2004; the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, Athens, 2011; the Grand Palais, Paris, 2013; Industry City, Brooklyn, 2013; the Hainan Biennale, Hainan, China, 2021; Stephen Antonakos: Neon and Geometry, Bookstein Projects, 2023, New York, NY; Stephen Antonakos: Terrains, New York City Center, New York, 2023 through September 2026; Archiv der Avantgarden, Egidio Marzona Museum, Blockhaus, Dresden, Germany, 2024-permanent; The Very First Edition — Artists’ Books from the Marzona Collection, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, 2024; Stephen Antonakos: 1977, Bookstein Projects, New York, NY, 2024; It empties, it fills, the light, B & M Theocharakis Foundation, Athens, Greece; 2024; I Walk the Line, Consortium Museum, Dijon, France, 2025; Aesthetics of Contingency, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, France, 2025, and The Greek Month in London 1975: 50 Years on Art at a Time of Political Change, National Museum on Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens, Greece, 2025-2026.

Major solo museum shows include Collages and Assemblages, Miami MoMA, Miami, Fl, 1964; Pillows, Contemp. Art Mus., Houston, TX, 1971; Neons, Allen Priebe Art Gallery, Wisconsin State Univ., Oshkosh, WI, 1971; California Show, Fresno State College Art Gallery, Fresno, CA, 1972, Ten Outdoor Neons, Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, 1974; Recent Drawings and Sculpture, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 1974; Three Neon Walls, Lowe Art Museum, Miami, Fl., 1980; Neons for Nevers, Maison de Culture de Nevers, Nevers, France, 1983; The Room, the Art Institute of Boston, Boston, MA, 1996; Inner Light, Smith College MoA, Northampton, MA; 1997; Meditation Room, Samuel P. Harn MoA, Gainesville, Fl, 1997; Public Work and Praise, State MoCA, Thessaloniki, 2000; Time Boxes 2000, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis Univ., Waltham, MA, 2000; Proscenium, the Neuberger Museum, SUNY, Purchase, 2000 and 2018; Journey, Macedonian MoMA, Thessaloniki, 2003; Silent Chapel, Onassis Cultural Center, NYC, 2003—4; S.A.: Three Spaces/Four Directions, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, 2004; Remembrance, Chapel of St. George, Mystras, Greece, 2004; Five Decades of Drawing, Graduate Center, CUNY, NYC, 2005; The Room Chapel, Allentown MoA, Allentown, PA, 2018-2020; and Light: S.A. and the Russian Avant-Garde, MOMus Museum Alex Mylona, Athens, 2020, and Stephen Antonakos Drawings: Geometry and Space, New York Studio School, New York, NY, 2023 - 2024.

Antonakos made over fifty Public Works including Red Neon Circle Fragments on a Blue Wall, 1978, Dayton, OH; Incomplete Circles and Squares, Red Neon, Hampshire College, Amherst, Ma, 1978; Incomplete Red Neon Square on Exterior Corner (for Chris D’Arcangelo) Univ. of Mass., Amherst, MA, 1979; Four Walls for the Hartsfield Int’l. Airport, Atlanta, GA, 1980; Neon for 42nd Street, NYC, 1981; Neon for the Bagley Wright Theater, Seattle, WA, 1983; Neons for the Tacoma Dome, Tacoma, WA, 1984; Neon for the La Jolla MCA, La Jolla, CA, 1984; Neon for the 14th District Police Station, Chicago, IL, 1986; Neons for Exchange Place, Jersey City, NJ, 1989; Neon for the 59th Street Marine Transfer Station, NYC, 1990; Neons for Pershing Square, Los Angeles, CA, 1991; Neons for the Stadtsparkasse, Cologne, 1993; Neons for Tachikawa, Japan, 1994; Blue Room, Public Library, San Antonio, TX, 1995; Neon for Granpark, Tokyo, Japan, 1996; Neon Lintel, Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY, Purchase, NY; Neons for Reading Power Plant, Tel Aviv, 1998-99; Procession, Ambelokipi Metro, Athens, 2000; Tria, Macedonian MCA, Thessaloniki, 2002; Six Incomplete Circles, Bari, Italy, 2004; Two Entrances, Athena Atrium, Odessa, 2004; Orrizonte, Airport of Puglia, Bari, 2005; Welcome, Univ of Dijon, France, 2006; and Recurrence, Hellenic American Union, Athens; 2007; Antonakos: 275 Greek Travel Collages, Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE), American Embassy in Athens, Greece, 2024, and Blue Incomplete Corner Neon, lobby of NYU's Paulson Center, New York, NY, 2024.

Antonakos’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Morgan Library and Museum; the New York University Art Collection; The National Gallery of Art, D.C.; The Menil Collection Houston, TX; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Smith College Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, Hartford, CT; the Parrish Museum of Art, Southampton, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens; the National MCA, Athens; the State MCA, Thessaloniki  (MoMUS); the Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens; The Alpha Bank Collection, Athens; the Alexander S. Onassis Collection, Athens; and the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. 

Antonakos received the Prize for Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2009) and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY (2000), the National Academy Museum (2011) and the Greek America Foundation (2011).

In the fall of 2023, Rizzoli Electa published Stephen Antonakos: Neon and Geometry, a major new monograph on the artist’s career designed by Henk van Assen. It features a comprehensive new scholarship by David Ebony. 

[1]  A Memorial for Stephen Antonakos, Published by Stephen Antonakos Studio LLC, October 22, 2013

This exhibition is presented in association with Bookstein Projects, NYC

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