ANTONAKOS REVISITED
Antonakos
On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Stephen Antonakos (1926–2013), CITRONNE Gallery presents the exhibition 'ANTONAKOS REVISITED', featuring works created between 1974 and 2003.
Revisited signifies a return to the work of Stephen Antonakos from the perspective of the present. More than fifty years separate us from the earliest work in the exhibition; yet, while time does not alter the works themselves, it inevitably changes how we interpret them. The centenary of his birth offers another opportunity to reconsider works and ideas that, in today’s context, take on a different significance and acquire renewed relevance.
Antonakos arrived in New York in 1930 at the age of four. His artistic practice developed in the post-war American metropolis, during a period of profound urban, social and economic transformation. Neon was already an integral part of the city, closely associated with commercial signage, advertising and the emerging culture of consumption. Antonakos often referred to the neon signs of 42nd Street and Broadway. In his own work, however, he detached neon from its commercial function as signage. Language and commercial messaging disappear; neon becomes line, colour and material, in direct relation to space and architecture.
In 2026, at a time marked by successive crises and competing certainties, Antonakos’s rigorous abstraction — and his sustained attention to line, space and the direct experience of seeing — takes on a different intensity.
