Cris Gianakos was born in New York in 1934. He attended the School of Visual Arts (SVA), where he has been a Professor of Art for many years.  

As part of the post-minimalist movement, he has been experimenting with simple geometric forms abstracted from the urban environment since the 1960's.  His work in the form of sculpture, painting and drawing, uses ancient sites as a subject matter to investigate their geometry and mathematical principles.  He further explores the roles that monuments play in our collective lives, drawing attention to both the past and future.  

He has exhibited his work worldwide in solo and group exhibitions extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, as well as in Canada, Japan and Argentina.  Gianakos has been the recipient of a variety of grants and awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the NY Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and others. He completed a large installation for the 2004 Athens Olympics.  His works are available in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others. He lives and works in New York.