Flannagan, John Bernard

Flannagan, John Bernard (flăn`əgən), 1895–1942, American sculptor, b. Fargo, N.Dak., studied at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. His early life was a bitter struggle against poverty. Too poor to buy quarried stone, he picked up field stones for carving. His sculptures, often of animals, range from profound to humorous in conception and are simple and direct in execution. In 1930 and again in 1932 he lived for a year in Ireland. He is well represented in the museums of various colleges including Vassar, Oberlin, Harvard, and the Univ. of Nebraska. A mountain goat, Figure of Dignity, is in the Metropolitan Museum. He committed suicide in 1942.

Bibliography

See his letters (with an introduction by W. R. Valentiner, 1942).

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Flannagan, John Bernard (1895–1942) sculptor; born in Fargo, N.D. He studied at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (1914–17), traveled to Ireland (1930 and 1932–33), and thereafter was based in New York City. He used birth and death themes, as in Triumph of the Egg (1937). He committed suicide after an incapacitating accident in 1939.