| 1926 | Stelianos (Stephen) Antonakos is born November 1 in Agios Nikolaos (Saint Nicholas), a mountain village in Laconia, Greece to Thomas and Evangelia Gregory Antonakos. Their other children, all older, are Basil (Bill), Panayotis (Peter), Adonis (Tony) and Kanella.
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| 1930 | The family moves to New York and settles near the Greek Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral on East Seventy-fourth Street, where Stephen is an altar boy. As a child he learns to draw by watching his older brother Peter.
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| 1941 | The United States enters World War II. Peter is drafted into the army on the first call. Tony is subsequently drafted into the air force. The family moves to the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. At Fort Hamilton High School, a perceptive teacher, Miss Anna Dick, takes Stephen and some classmates to a W.P.A. warehouse to select art to exhibit at the school. She recognizes his drawing ability and is the first to encourage a life in art.
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| 1945-47 | In the middle of his senior year he is drafted into the army; serves in the Pacific.
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| 1947-49 | Back home, he enrolls in the art department at Brooklyn Community College and receives the certificate two years later. In his first studio he draws and paints figures in architectural settings, and often uses fabrics in collage, applique, and embroidery techniques.
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| early 1950s | Starts using found objects because he wants his work to be experienced as "real things in the real world," not representations. Makes regular visits to The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and such galleries as Stable, Janis, Koontz, and Gerson. Is interested in the work of Americans Joseph Cornell, Franz Kline, Barnet Newman, and Jackson Pollock and the Europeans Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana.
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| 1956 | Returns to Agios Nikolaos for the first time. Is impressed by the jagged landscape and intense light of the region. In Athens he visits the Parthenon and the Archaeological Museum. Back in New York, he abandons easel painting. Now, found materials - and paint itself - are used for their specific, physical presences. Castoffs - such as bedclothes, furniture parts, boxes and alphabet letters - are sewn, glued and nailed together. Geometric shapes and formal relationships become increasingly important. Moves studio to West Twenty-ninth Street, in the fur district. Here his Sewlages (sewn fabric collages), assemblages, and constructions become much larger. "The whole studio looked like a collage," he later wrote.
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| 1958 | First one-person show, Collages, Avant-Garde Gallery, New York. |
| 1960 | Introduces neon into the work. It soon becomes his primary medium.
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| 1961-62 | Exhibits in Martha Jackson's New Forms, New Media I and II (1960); among the other artists are Lee Bontecou, Yves Klein, and Claes Oldenburg. Also included in group shows at the Allan Stone Gallery (1961, 1962).
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| 1963-65 | Moves to larger Greene Street loft in SoHo where he begins his practice of making drawings for site-specific neon projects on an architectural scale, including Installations and Rooms. Shows in three exhibitions at the Byron Gallery, including one-person exhibition, Pillows (1964) Teaches studio courses at Brooklyn Museum.
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| 1966 | Joins the Fischbach Gallery. Has one-person exhibitions of neons there in 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1972.
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| 1967 | Moves to larger studio on West Broadway.
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| 1967-1971 | In the Fischbach Gallery shows, he uses bare neon tubing in "incomplete" geometric forms for large-scale site-specific installations. Begins to exhibit neon sculptures, Walls and installations in major American and European museums. These shows often include drawings. Artist-in-residence positions at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Yale University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Fresno State College in California, and elsewhere.
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| 1970 | Begins series of viewer-participation projects culminating in exhibitions of "Packages Meant to Be Opened and Packages Meant Never to Be Opened" in Fresno (1972) and New York (1973).
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| 1972 | Begins the practice of painting the surfaces of his Walls, behind the neons, in one or two solid colors.
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| 1973 | Joins John Weber Gallery. One-person exhibitions in 1974, 1975 and 1977. Constructs first Rooms with interior and exterior neon geometry, indoors at the San Francisco Museum of Art and outdoors in Grand Rapids, Mich.
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| 1974 | Ten Outdoor Neons commissioned by Richard Koshalek for the entire exterior of the Fort Worth Art Museum - a breakthrough in terms of scale.
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| 1977 | Exhibits fifty-foot red Incomplete Neon Square outdoors at Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany.
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| 1978 | Makes Circle Room for exhibition at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, curated by Hugh M. Davies. Completes first permanent public neon commissions, over a swimming pool at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and on the Federal Building in Dayton, Ohio. Commissions for public works with neon continue to the present in the United States, Europe and Japan. |
| 1980 | Spends six months in Berlin on D.A.A.D. grant. Assembles large collages from color-printed paper. These lead directly to his first artist's book. Begins drawings with colored pencil on vellum, of geometric figures on hatched grounds. These continue to the present. Makes first unstretched painted canvases with neon. They continue through the decade. Begins annual visits to Greece.
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| 1981 | Produces first artist's book, Cuts.
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| 1982 | Exhibits first back-lit Panels with painted or gilded surfaces and the colored glow of neon visible around their edges. These continue to the present and constitute a major form of expression.
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| 1983 | Begins practice of painting part or all of the surface of his neon Walls with freehand brushstrokes related to the hatching technique of the vellum drawings.
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| 1983-85 | Large "Neon for Paris" exhibited on Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in exhibition Electra.
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| 1985 | Completes second artist's book, "BOOK".
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| mid 1980s | Starts ongoing practice of assembling small travel collages. They are first exhibited in Athens in 1988-89.
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| 1986 | Creates unique artist's book, Alphavitos, with silver covers. The edition of eight, with leather covers, is finished in 1993.
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| 1987 | Represents the United States at the 19th Sao Paulo Bienal.
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| 1988 | Joins Illeana Tounta's Gallery, Athens. One-person shows in 1988-89, 1992, 1997.
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| 1989 | Exhibits a Room with a Series of Four Panels, in memory of his brothers and sister, in Nagoya, Japan. This four-Panel work was later acquired by the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece.
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| 1990 | Makes first drawings and models for Chapels and Meditation Rooms with neon.
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| 1992 | Makes outdoor-indoor installation with neon Walls and coal floor at the Le Corbusier building for the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University.
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| 1993 | Exhibits Chapel of the Saints, an installation in the stone Fortress of Saint George in Rhodes.
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| 1994 | Installs four permanent sculptures at Tachikawa, Japan. Conceived as a unit, the neons for this groups of buildings are the artist's largest to date.
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| 1995 | From now on, makes the vellum drawings in series as well as on single sheets. Inspired by reproductions in books of the twelfth-century icon, makes an iron model "Chapel of the Heavenly Ladder".
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| 1997 | The Glory of Byzantium exhibition arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sees Icon with the Heavenly Ladder for the first time. Monks who have accompanied the icons from the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai to New York visit the studio and admire the Chapel models, the Panels, and the book Alphavitos. Represents Greece at the 47th Venice Biennale, exhibiting the full-scale, iron and neon Chapel of the Heavenly Ladder. Exhibition Inner Light at the Smith College Museum of Art.
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| 1998 | Short-term fellowship at Princeton University, sponsored by the Visual Arts Program, the Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Council on the Humanities.
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| 1999 | Exhibits Chapel for P.S. 1 and Welcome at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. Completes Neons for Reading Power Station, Tel Aviv, Israel.
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| 2000 | Completes public work "Procession" at Ambelokipi Station; Attiko Metro; Athens. Exhibits "Proscenium" at Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY Purchase College, Purchase, New York. Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Neuberger Museum, State University of NY, Purchase, NY. Exhibits Chapel of the Theotokos at Schirn Kunthalle Frankfurt.
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| 2001 | Installs public work "Once, Again" at Smith College, Northhampton, Massachusetss.
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| 2002 | Installs three public works: "Six Incomplete Circles" Bari, Italy; "Tria" Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art; Thessaloniki; and "Double Sequence" General Mitchell International Airport; Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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| 2003 | Installs public works: "Ascension" National Bank of Greece, Athens; and "Three Gates" Tokamachi Project, Tsumari, Japan.
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| 2004 | Installs public works: "Two Entrances" Athena Atrium; Odessa, Ukraine and "Orizzonte" New Airport, Bari, Italy
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