Education
Born in the island"s capital, Douglas, Kneale studied painting at the Douglas School of Art, from which he graduated in 1947, and then moved to London, to study at the Royal Academy Schools.
Born in the island"s capital, Douglas, Kneale studied painting at the Douglas School of Art, from which he graduated in 1947, and then moved to London, to study at the Royal Academy Schools.
During the 1950s, he learned welding, and in 1960 took to sculpture in preference to painting, and became a teacher. He has taught at Hornsey College of Art and Design, and from 1963 until his retirement from teaching in 1995 he taught sculpture at the Royal College of Artist He was also Master and later Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy between 1982 and 1990.
In the United States of America, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City includes examples of his work amongst its public collections.
He was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Prize in 1952, as well as the Daily Express Young Painters" Prize (1955) and an Arts Council Purchase Award (1969). After a successful solo show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1966, Kneale became the first abstract sculptor to be elected a Royal Academician in 1974.
He accepted the honour only on the condition that he be allowed to curate a show of contemporary sculpture which resulted in a groundbreaking survey of some of the period"s most exciting sculptors. Kneale is the younger brother of the screenwriter Nigel Kneale (1922–2006), best known for his Quatermass television serials.
Kneale illustrated the covers for Penguin Books" releases of his elder brother"s Quatermass scripts in 1960.
He was also responsible for a painting of a lobster from which British Broadcasting Corporation special effects designers Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kine drew their inspiration for the Martian creatures they constructed for Quatermass and the Pit (1958-1959). He currently lives in London.