“My father married my mother in Chania, he was 47 and she was 17. He had just returned from the US after working there for many years. Because of the coming war in Europe, they returned to America and settled in Manhattan. I was born shortly after 1938 and was baptized by Stylianos. My neighbors and friends were blacks, Puerto Ricans, Egyptians and Pakistanis. We played in the streets with brooms and bottle caps. My father was a cook, and my mother baked wonderful cookies at home. Jazz and art have become my passion. Soon I left to study art in Los Angeles. I chose Art Center School because there was a group of young people on the cover of the catalog drawing a very attractive girl.”

OUR Steve Gianakos he doesn’t sound like an 85-year-old authentic and accomplished New York artist, though he is and is “probably one of the most important American artists today, one of the interesting cases of post-pop visual language”. as an art history professor says Thanasis Moutsopoulos. Gianakos speaks and draws in the same way: without seriousness, with humor and relaxation, with the spontaneity of mass American culture and the sarcasm of comics and collages.

We looked for him in New York, where he lives, although he now spends his summers in Chania, “family land” as he calls Crete. The reason for the interview was the solo exhibition “I… Loop de Loop…”, which opens tomorrow at the Citronne Gallery, with his latest works, large-scale works of 2022.

After all, we talked about much more, and mainly about his fascinating life, which quickly stepped over the twentieth century and continues. A member of the artistic community of the Greek diaspora at a time when contemporary art in the US was really changing, she tells of a journey – personal and artistic – characterized by the freedom and spirit of questioning the East Village and the Lower East Side in the ’70s and 70s, 80 -X.

My father was a cook and my mother made wonderful cookies at home – Jazz and art became my passion.

“Eventually I left California, moved back to New York and studied at the Pratt Institute,” he says. “When I finished, I was introduced to the sculptor Klaas Oldenburg, who was moving to a new studio, and I settled in Manhattan. That’s how it was at the time. All artists worked on the area of ​​15 blocks. Above me was Christo. Stutterwad lived downstairs. Jack Smith in the corner. The next block was Rauschenberg. And others, and others. The energy was explosive. My first exhibition was at the Fischbach Gallery at 799 Madison Avenue, where great people were represented: Tony Smith, Eva Hess and Bob Ryan. Then everything seemed simple and easy.

While studying industrial design at Pratt, visionary Greek-American architect and educator William Katavolos, known for his breakthrough ideas and discoveries, had a major impact. In his seventy-year career, Katavolos envisioned a future for houses that could “grow” their own food and dwellings underwater.

“Through this, I met Nick Zografos, an up-and-coming furniture designer, and his wife Alyx,” Gianakos says of New York’s Greek community. “We hung out and I hung my paintings in his showroom on Lexington Avenue. I also remember going to Luka Samara’s little apartment for tea and then seeing his work in the stunning Green Gallery. Valuable!”.

Over the years, until the 1980s, “unconsciously,” as he says, Greece blended into the culture of New York. “I started using Greek pottery in my photographs, even though the focus was on the potter’s dress,” he comments jokingly and teasingly. “But the Greek Boys series, which I’m very proud of, has to do with Greek stereotypes,” he explains, showing us how the choliadaki are mixed with the “dirty” underground pop art he creates.

The protagonist of Steve Yanakow’s exhibition “I… Loop de Loop…” at Citronne is a non-binary figure, a male face with a curly mustache placed on various female bodies. By demystifying each social standard, the artist forces the viewer to define boundaries for himself. “Life is beautiful,” he says, ending our conversation by thinking about the upcoming summer in Chanio.