JAMES HULL (BRITISH 1921-1990)
COMPOSITION IV 90
signed and dated HULL / IV 90 upper right
gouache, wax crayons and house paint on canvas laid on card
54.5 x 80cm; 21 1/2 x 31 1/2in
unframed

JAMES HULL (Lots 68-79)

Introduction
Hull aptly summed up his work as ‘a tension of objects in space’. And at his solo ‘come-back’ exhibition at Adrienne Resnick Gallery in 1989 Resnick described him as ‘a giant, both physically and as an artist’.

Hull’s reputation flourished in the 1950s, when he established himself as one of the leading abstract painters of the post-War years in Britain. His first one-man exhibition was at the Brook Street Gallery in 1949 where Herbert Read gave the opening address. In 1951 he designed a mural for the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain and started showing regularly with Gimpel Fils (1951-56). Elsewhere in London he exhibited with the Redfern Gallery and at the ICA and took part in the renowned This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956; the same year Gimpel held a joint exhibition of Hull and Roger Hilton’s work. Abroad he showed with Galerie de France, Paris, Passedoit Gallery, New York (together with Peter Lanyon and William Gear), and at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.

But in 1960 Hull turned his back on painting full time after winning a competition to design the interior of the Daily Mirror building. He spent the next ten years as a full-time design consultant for the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), before moving with his family to Ibiza where he designed jewellery. After the death of his daughter in a car accident in the early 1970s he left to embark on a solo travel odyssey. Over the next few years he held down a variety of jobs, including as a consultant designer for NASA’s space shuttle building in the USA. Returning to London in 1980 he took up painting once more. It took him a few years to re-establish himself, but by the end of the decade his work was gaining traction once again, first at the Strickland Gallery in 1986, and then with Adrienne Resnick Gallery and Whitford & Hughes in 1989. His death a year later was all too premature.