ARTIST

Barry Flanagan OBE RA (11 January 1941 – 31 August 2009) was a Welsh sculptor. He is best known for his bronze statues of hares and other animals.

Barry Flanagan was born on 11 January 1941 in Prestatyn, in North Wales. From 1957 to 1958 he studied architecture at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts. He studied sculpture at Saint Martin's School of Art in London from 1964 to 1966, and from 1967 to 1971 taught both at Saint Martin's and at the Central School of Art and Design.

Flanagan died on 31 August 2009 of motor neurone disease.

He was the subject of a biographical film by Peter Bach, The Man Who Sculpted Hares: Barry Flanagan, A Life.

'Poet of the Building Site' by Robin Marchesi. A book on his life with Barry Flanagan was published by The Irish Museum of Modern Art 2011.


Flanagan's Thinker on a Rock is in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

Flanagan's hare statue Large Left-Handed Drummer was on display in Union Square (New York City) park from 18 February to 24 June 2007.

Flanagan's 1993 Large Mirror Nijinski, again with two hares, is displayed at the Skulpturen Park Köln, in Cologne.

Tate Britain held a retrospective show Early Works 1965–1982 from September 2011 to January 2012. This exhibition contained many examples of his less well known pieces using materials such as cloth and rope, as well as some of the early bronze hare sculptures for which he became famous.

At an exhibition held by Sotheby's at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, in September–October 2012, fifteen of Flanagan's works were shown in a parkland setting. They included Large Nijinski on Anvil Point and Nijinski Hare, placed at opposite ends of the Canal Pond.