FLANAGAN, Barry
Barry Flanagan was born in Prestatyn, North Wales in 1941. In 1957 and 1958, he studied at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts before going on to St. Martin’s School of Art in London in 1964. Flanagan graduated in 1966 with a Vocational Diploma in Sculpture and then went on to teach at St. Martin’s School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, between 1967 and 1971.
He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in Britain and abroad, including more recently shows such as ‘Gravity and Grace: The Changing Condition of Sculpture’ at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1993 and ‘Un Siècle de Sculpture Anglaise’ at the Jeu de Paume, Paris in 1996. In 1982, Flanagan represented Britain at the Venice Biennale.
Flanagan is perhaps best known for his dynamic, often monumental, bronze hares, which were first exhibited in the early eighties. They are “bitingly ironic and bold” and have come to represent “one of the most personal and recognizable artistic endeavors of the second half of this century….emblems of creative freedom, without a whit of pretension”. Flanagan’s first bronze ‘Leaping Hare’ was cast in 1979. His move to bronze represented the culmination of his earlier explorations into different media, from the sand, rope and felt, of his earliest sculptures, which focused on composition and challenged previous ideas of what sculpture might constitute, to the stone, marble and sheet metal sculptures of the seventies.
A major retrospective of his work was held at the Fundacion ‘La Caixa’ Madrid in 1993, touring to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes in 1994. His work is held in public collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the Tate Gallery in London. Flanagan’s bronze hares have also been exhibited in many outdoor spaces, most notably on Park Avenue in New York in 1995-6 and at Grant Park, Chicago in 1996. In 1998, he has had solo exhibitions in Chicago, Salzburg, Basel and London (Tate Gallery, 2000). Barry Flanagan lives in Dublin.
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