Barry Flanagan at von Bartha, Basel

I prefer working with the essential stuff of sculpture rather than my own “ambitions” for it. This way I hope to find things’ – Barry Flanagan, 1969 

Barry Flanagan (1941–2009) was one of Britain’s pre-eminent sculptors.   Flanagan graduated from St Martin’s School of Art where he had already established his reputation as a leading figure of the avant-garde, as a writer of concrete poetry and a ’pataphysician, espousing Alfred Jarry’s ‘science of imaginary solutions’. He soon received international critical acclaim for his intuitive and inventive approach to materials, which aligned him with new art practices and the emergent art movements of Arte Povera, Land Art and Process Art. From 1972, reassessing the function of public sculpture, Flanagan began to explore more traditional materials and methods, working with stone and bronze. Flanagan is best known for his dynamic, often monumental, bronze hares, which spring into life and were first exhibited in the early eighties. 

Flanagan described himself as an itinerant, European sculptor, holding British and Irish citizenship and living between London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Ibiza and New York. He represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and was awarded an OBE and elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1991.