“I was a fully-fledged sculptor from the age of 17. I stepped right into it and embraced the physical world.”
Barry Flanagan
(b. Prestatyn, Wales, 1941, d. Ibiza, Spain, 2009)
Barry Flanagan studied architecture at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts and Sculpture at St. Martin's School of Art, London. In 1991 he was elected to the Royal Academy and he received the OBE.
Flanagan represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1982. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Fundación 'La Caixa' Madrid in 1993, touring to the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes in 1994. 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. He had an exhibition at Tate, Liverpool in 2000. In 2002, a major exhibition of his work was shown at the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Germany, and toured to the Musee d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice. In 2006, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin held a major retrospective of his work, in association with Dublin City Art Gallery, The Hugh Lane, which included ten large-scale bronzes installed along O'Connell Street and in Parnell Square. In 2011 the Tate Britain presented Barry Flanagan Early Works 1965-1982. His work is held in public collections worldwide including MoMA New York, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and The Tate Britain in London.
Flanagan maintained studios in many cities around the world throughout his career. For the final years of his life, he split time between Dublin and Ibiza until his death in 2009.
