Antal was a member of the Sonntagskreis intellectual group formed in Budapest by Béla Balázs, György Lukács and others in 1915.
In 1919, he became its Vorsitzender des Direktoriums (Chairman of the Board) for several months until the White Terror toppled the new Hungarian Soviet Republic and he fled the country.
From 1926 to 1934, he was an editor for Kritische Berichte zur kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur, alongside Bruno Fürst.
In 1933, he was forced to flee from political upheaval again, as the Nazi Party rose to prominence in Germany.
"[3] Lee Sorensen of the Dictionary of Art Historians writes that Antal "increasingly applied the concept of Marxist dialectical materialism to art history", suggesting that "artistic style is primarily an expression of ideology, political beliefs and social class".