Since the 1960’s, Cris Gianakos has been part of the New York avant-garde, active in both the minimalist and abstract expressionist scene. His art moves with ease between sculpture, installations and painting, but focuses on the geometrical form as it relates to the urban landscape and architecture around us.
Cris Gianakos, born 1934 in New York, studied art at the School of Visual Arts, but says that he is mostly self taught. In the sixties he started experimenting with what has become the central theme in his art: simple geometric forms and abstracted from the urban enivironment. A much talked-of installation was carried out at a crossing in Central Park in 1969. Gianakos spread flour on the asphalt in the shape of a giant X and let cyclists and pedestrians who were passing over it carry the flour with them to change the shape in a haphazard way.
Cris Gianakos is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others, but his work can also be found in several Swedish collections, such as Moderna Museet, Göteborgs konstmuseum and Malmö konstmuseum.