Barry Flanagan was a British sculptor and print-maker.
The artist has said that print-making represents for him a ‘traditional pursuit’. His prints and drawings often have a very personal content; sometimes created as gifts for friends, they record aspects of the artist’s personal life.
Flanagan began to make prints in 1970, with his first series published by the Rowan Gallery in 1972, a particularly prolific year for the artist. Thereafter he published series of prints with Bernard Jacobson Gallery (1976) and Waddington Graphics (1983). Flanagan used the Petersburg Press, at Burleighfield Press with David Harding, or the press he had in his own studio in the 1970s.
In 1981 Flanagan exhibited a comprehensive range of his prints and drawings at the Mostyn Art Gallery, Llandudno. The exhibition travelled to Mold, Cardiff, Swansea, Southampton and London and then, in 1983, toured in Italy, France and Holland.
There is a large group of Flanagan's work held in the Tate Collection, including a representation of nearly the entire printed output of the artist up to 1983, which was gifted by the artist's widow, Sue, in 1985. In the early 1980s Colin Dyer, working with the artist in his studio, completed archival sets of prints using cream Vélin d’Arches paper.
