Manneken Press has published several print projects with Richard Hull since 2015, most recently a series of unique monotypes loosely based on Old West “wanted” posters, produced in collaboration with the acclaimed poet and critic John Yau. Additional details about this project can be found in a blog post here and in Hyperallergic.
In 2017, Hull produced a pair of large monochromatic etchings and six large, vividly colored monotypes. Each print presents a portrait-like structure composed of lobes, appendages, and swirling masses suggestive of breasts, chins, hair, eyes, and other bodily forms arranged in place of a head. The horizontal-format etchings, Tuesday and Wednesday, depict a subject viewing itself in a mirror, the mirror’s funky frame becoming an integral part of the figure itself.
Manneken Press first collaborated with Richard Hull in 2015, publishing a pair of smaller etching editions along with additional monotypes. Although Hull is best known for his paintings, his printmaking oeuvre clearly demonstrates his exceptional strengths as a draftsman.
About the Artist
Richard Hull is a Chicago-based painter and printmaker whose work is known for its psychologically charged, biomorphic imagery and its inventive engagement with the human figure. Born in 1955 in Oklahoma City, Hull came of age artistically in Chicago, where he earned his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has remained a vital presence in the city’s art community ever since.
Hull is best known for paintings and works on paper that hover between abstraction and figuration. His images often resemble distorted heads or bodies constructed from swirling, fleshy forms, protrusions, and orifices. These hybrid figures feel at once comic, grotesque, vulnerable, and introspective, suggesting inner states rather than literal likenesses. Viewers frequently describe his work as both humorous and unsettling—a balance Hull sustains through expressive drawing, saturated color, and an intuitive sense of composition.
Drawing is central to Hull’s practice. Whether working in paint or print, he builds his forms through line and layered marks, allowing images to evolve organically rather than adhering to a fixed plan. This improvisational approach gives his work a sense of motion and psychological immediacy, as if the figures are continually in the process of becoming themselves.
Although Hull is primarily recognized as a painter, printmaking has played an important role in his career. His etchings and monotypes extend the same visual language found in his paintings while highlighting his strengths as a draftsman. In print, Hull often embraces chance and material experimentation, using the medium to push his imagery in new directions rather than simply reproducing painted works.
Richard Hull has had more than 40 solo exhibitions. His work is included in numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Westchester, New York; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Overall, Richard Hull’s art stands out for its singular voice—one that blends formal rigor, emotional intensity, and a distinctly offbeat sense of humor to explore what it means to inhabit both a body and a mind in the contemporary world.