Trevor Bell was born in Leeds and studied at the College of Art from 1947 to 1952. He worked as a teacher at Harrogate College of Art, before moving to Cornwall in 1955 upon the advice of his contemporary, Terry Frost RA. He became a leading member of the younger generation of St Ives artists, exhibiting with the Penwith Society of Arts from 1956. A series of solo exhibitions at Waddington Galleries followed from 1958 onwards.
Bell was awarded an Italian government sponsorship in 1958; won one of six main painting prizes at the first Paris International Biennale of Young Artists in 1959; and took up the Gregory Fellowship, awarded by Leeds University, in 1960. Bell returned to teaching, following an invitation to become Professor of Graduate Painting at Florida State University in the 1970s, whilst continuing to exhibit in the States and in Europe, including a major solo show at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1973. He lived in the United States for over twenty years but, moving full circle, returned to settle and paint in Cornwall in the 1990s.
In 1995 he exhibited at Tate St Ives and was included in the John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool. His first large one-man show since returning to Britain followed in 1998, at The New Millennium Art Gallery, St. Ives.
