Barry Flanagan

H'om, white marble sculpture by Barry Flanagan, 2001, Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Barry Flanagan (January 11, 1941 - August 31, 2009) was a Welsh sculptor, best known for his bronze statues of hares.

Biography

Barry Flanagan was born in Prestatyn, North Wales. He studied at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts (1957–1958) before going on to St. Martin's School of Art in London in 1964. Flanagan graduated in 1966 and went on to teach at St. Martin's School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1967–1971). 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 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes in 1994.

Flanagan's bronze hares have also been exhibited in many outdoor spaces, most notably on Park Avenue in New York in 1995–96 and in Chicago's Grant Park in 1996. In 1999, he had a solo exhibition at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels followed by an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool (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, France. Flanagan died on August 31 2009 of motor neurone disease.

The Barry Flanagan statue "Thinker on a Rock" is currently on loan to Washington University in St. Louis. Affectionately known to students as "the bunny" the piece is featured prominently in a central location near Olin Library on the Washington University Danforth Campus. Another "Thinker on a Rock" is also located in Washington, D.C. in the National Gallery of Art's sculpture garden^[1]. This statue marries Flanagan's ever-present hare motif found in many of his bronzes (in the 1980s, he "perceived the image of a hare unveiling itself" before him and has used it since) with a pose from Rodin's The Thinker(1880).

Flanagan's hare statue "Large Left-Handed Drummer" was on display in Union Square (New York City) park through June 24, 2007.^[2]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Barry Flanagan

• Royal Academy of Arts
• Waddington-Galleries
• Works of Flanagan on the streets of Dublin