Polymath artist with an architectural training, appreciated by his peers for his precise, sharp, quickly assimilative mind. His early works were abstract and Constructivist, in the manner of Kenneth Martin. McHale saw the invention of the transistor in 1948 as the start of a new era in mass communications. With the critic Lawrence Alloway, McHale was an articulate member of Independent Group at the ICA in the 1950s, other members including Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Toni del Renzio and William Turnbull. The Group spawned the important This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956, linking art with popular culture. During part of the time this was being prepared McHale was in America on a one-year fellowship at Yale, where he adopted Josef Albers’ colour and sent over material which formed a key parts of the show.