Stephen Antonakos (1926-2013), pioneering light sculptor

Neons for the 59th Street Marine Transfer Station,, New York City, 1990.

Incomplete Neon Square,, Kassel, Germany, 1977.

Stephen Antonakos was an internationally recognized sculptor and a pioneer in the use of neon as art.

“Antonakos used neon as a painter uses paint. Minimalist, with fluid lines and saturated colors that recall Matisse.”  
- The New York Times, September 6, 2013

Antonakos designed light sculptures using what he called “incomplete geometric forms” that invite the viewer’s to finish them. According to Ed Kerns, Eugene H. Clapp II Professor of Art at Lafayette College, “[Antonakos] inspires us with his use of light to define space and time as it interacts with form.”

Major works by Stephen Antonakos are found in public spaces and private collections around the world. Public light sculptures in the United States include midtown Manhattan, Chicago, Baltimore, and Atlanta. International installations can be found in cities that include Paris, Athens, and Bari, Italy.

Antonakos’s smaller works are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Join us—it’s time to bring Stephen Antonakos’s acclaimed sculpture back to life.