Michael Hale

Born in London, Michael Hale studied at Norwich School of Art (1952–56), and the Royal Academy Schools, London (1956–60).

A pioneering screenprinter, Hale worked as a master printing technician at the groundbreaking Kelpra Studio, set up by wife Rose Kelly and husband Chris Prater in Kentish Town in 1957 – an important hub for artists of the day including the likes of Peter Blake and Patrick Caulfield.

Hale’s work is largely definable as ‘Hard-Edged Abstraction’, a movement born in the late 1950s in reaction to the wholly emotive Abstract Expressionism, and characterised by crisply de-lineated geometric colour fields – much cooler and stylised in tone. It was a style that became synonymous with Britain’s ‘Swinging Sixties’ and psychedelic 70s, and was ideally suited to screenprinting; originally a commercial medium which the likes of Kelpra Studios elevated to artform.

Hale went to on to teach at art schools including Bath Academy, Winchester School of Art, Strasbourg College of Art and was Head of the Printing Department at Leicester Polytechnic (today de Montfort University). Hale exhibited with Tom Phillips at the AIA Gallery in 1966 and was one of the artists included in the touring Arts Council exhibition, 'Eight English Printmakers' in 1970.