How can I buy a work by Richard Hull?

Bruno David Gallery handles the sale of available works by Richard Hull. For prices and availability, email info@brunodavidgallery.com or call +1 314 696 2377.

Where can I see work by Richard Hull in person?

At Bruno David Gallery, 7513 Forsyth Boulevard, Saint Louis, Missouri 63105, during public hours or by appointment. His work is also in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

What does Richard Hull make?

Paintings in oil mixed with wax on linen, scratched back, sometimes with a comb, into concentric, hair-like marks that build heads and figures he calls “stolen portraits”; he also makes layered crayon drawings, prints and double-sided painted sculptures in CNC-routed MDF.

Where is Richard Hull based?

Richard Hull lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.

Has Richard Hull had an exhibition at Bruno David Gallery?

Yes. Painting and Drawing (February 2020); Recent Paintings (2013) are among his exhibitions at the gallery. Catalogues can be read in the gallery’s Publications library at brunodavidgallery.com/publications.

Richard Hull

Richard Hull (born 1955) is a Chicago-based painter who builds images from looping lines and shapes that sit between abstraction and figuration. For more than a decade his main subject has been the head, rendered as dense, hair-like forms that he calls “stolen portraits.” Early in his career he was known for abstracted architectural interiors; in recent paintings the heads have grown into full figures set in ambiguous scenes.

Hull paints in oil mixed with wax on linen, a method he has used since 1978. The wax lets him scratch back into the paint, sometimes with a comb, to make concentric, hair-like marks. He also makes layered crayon drawings, prints, and double-sided painted sculptures in CNC-routed MDF that suggest heads and vanity mirrors. He has said that he thinks of the paintings as mirrors and that his lifelong project in painting has been to locate himself.

Hull attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1976, received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1977, and earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979.

He has taught painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an adjunct professor since the mid-2000s and for many years co-taught a course called Pictorial Structures with the painter Jim Nutt. While still a graduate student he joined Phyllis Kind Gallery, which gave him his first solo exhibition in New York in 1979 and showed his work there and in Chicago until the mid-1990s.

Hull has had more than 40 solo exhibitions, including six at Western Exhibitions in Chicago since 2010, and his work has been shown at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, and the Elmhurst Art Museum. It is held by collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 1980 he won the Art Institute of Chicago’s William H. Bartels Prize. Bruno David Gallery has presented solo exhibitions of his work in 2013 (Recent Paintings) and 2020 (Painting and Drawing), each with a gallery catalogue.

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