John Dann was born in Montreal in 1951.  At age fourteen he had decided on a career in art.  He left school at the age of sixteen and attended the Montreal Museum School of Art.  At age eighteen he traveled to Italy where he briefly attended the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Carrara, before leaving the school to work in foundries and marble ateliers.  He worked with the artist, Gonzalo Fonseca, for two years in both Italy and New York.

John returned to Montreal in 1973 and the following year was married.  Between 1973 and 1984 he undertook numerous sculptured portraits of prominent Canadians, including John Diefenbaker, Dr. Wilder Penfield,  Lester Pearson and Glenn Gould, as well as the bronze statue of Sir John A. Macdonald that was later installed in front of City Hall in Victoria BC.  In 1982 the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria organized an exhibition of his sculpture to coincide with the unveiling of the Macdonald sculpture.

In 1985  Dann moved to Massachusetts, a time that saw his sculpture became increasingly abstract. When he returned to Canada in 2008 there was again a demarcation that saw painting and colour become a more important element in his work.