| Biography
James Hull painter and interior designer was born in London. Hull studied architectural design before World War ll, during which he served in the Army, 1939-46, eventually becoming a toymaker and scenery designer. His first paintings were Surrealistic, but this changed to a Constructionist style using pure colour and basic geometrical shapes. With the help of Herbert Read, Hull had his first exhibition in the Brook Street Gallery in 1949. His reputation as a member of the avant-garde grew as he showed at Gimpel Fils and painted his mural 'The Story of Coal' for the Festival of Britain's Dome of Discovery in 1951. Hull began to show in Paris and New York, but economic pressures made him enter and win a competition to design the interior of the Daily Mirror building, and he worked for the IPC publishing conglomarate until 1970. After a sojourn in Ibiza he carried out a variety of designing jobs abroad. Returned to London 1980 in straitened circumstances. The period before his death his reputation as a pioneer abstractionist was re-established with shows at Camden Galleries and Whitford and Hughes.
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