Paul Granlund, 77; Sculpted Human Figures in Bronze

Paul Granlund, 77, a Minnesota sculptor known for his exuberant human figures, died Monday of respiratory failure at a hospital in Mankato, Minn.

Born in Minneapolis, Granlund served in the Army Air Forces in World War II and recalled flying a reconnaissance mission over Hiroshima, Japan, two days after the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb.

After the war, he studied philosophy and art at the University of Minnesota and Gustavus Adolphus College. He later earned a master’s degree from Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Michigan. Granlund, who worked in bronze, is probably best known for his exuberant human figures. Editions of his tribute to Charles Lindbergh are at Le Bourget airfield near Paris and in San Diego near the site where the Minnesota-born aviator’s plane “Spirit of St. Louis” was built.

Granlund’s commissions can be found throughout Europe -- in Sweden, England, France and Italy -- as well as India, Hong Kong and Japan. In 1992, a work by Granlund titled “Constellation Earth” became the first by an American to be installed in Japan’s Nagasaki Peace Park, a memorial to those who died in the atomic bombing in 1945.