Damien Hirst is an internationally renowned contemporary artist. Hirst studied at Goldsmiths College, London and first gained recognition after curating the seminal show Freeze in 1988; the inaugural exhibition of the group of artists now known as the Young British Artists or YBAs. The exhibition established Hirst and his fellow students as among the most prominent artists of their generation.
Read MoreHirst works in a variety of media including installation, sculpture, painting, and drawing. Many of his works revolve around the central theme of death. Among his most notable works are The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark suspended in formaldehyde in a vitrine, and For the Love of God, a human skull completely encrusted in diamonds. Viewers of Hirst’s work are forced to confront their own fears surrounding mortality. His other enduring themes of religion, love, art, and science are also embodied in works equally challenging for which he has created his own motifs and vocabulary. Works range from cabinets of pills, spin paintings and works that use dead butterflies.
Damien Hirst was born in England where he continues to live and work. In 1995, he was the recipient of the Turner Prize. The first retrospective of Hirst’s work, The Agony and the Ecstasy, took place at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, in 2004. A later retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2012 recognized Hirst’s contributions to British art over the last three decades.
Hirst is also recognised as a disruptive player in the art world. This has involved consigning his own works to an auction house for a one vendor sale, to selling his own editions and multiples through a retail outlet called Other Criteria. Recently Hirst opened his own art gallery in London.
Hirst has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2012); Musei di Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (2010); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008); and Astrup Fearnley Museet fur Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2005). His work is held in major public and private collections around the world.
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Related Press Damien Hirst, Turning In Circles 12 October 2019, Hyperallergic LONDON — It's a hot mid-afternoon in the West End's posh Mayfair district, and Damien Hirst is standing outside the glass double-doors of the White Cube gallery, looking every inch the devil-may-care prankster out of some early Shakespearean comedy.
Related Press The misplaced outrage over Damien Hirst’s dead butterflies 30 September 2019, Apollo Damien Hirst has recently unveiled a new series of his 'butterfly-wing paintings' and the internet is ablaze with debate. Butterflies, dead or alive, have appeared in the artist's work since the late 1980s and he has produced very similar paintings to the ones now exhibited at White Cube in London since the mid 2000s.
Related Press In Murakami’s Moscow, It’s All “Cuteness and Catastrophe” 3 October 2017, Vogue In a 2000 interview with the Japanese photographer Mako Wakasa for the Journal of Contemporary Art, the artist Takashi Murakami presented the following rules for survival and success in the contemporary art market (best exemplified, he said, by Damien Hirst and the continued relevance of Picasso and Warhol): "First of all, distinctively...
Related Press Venice Notebook: Samplers From a Biennale Banquet 14 May 2017, The New York Times The Biennale comprises a central exhibition, organized this year by Christine Macel, chief curator of the Pompidou Center in Paris; and 85 national pavilions, which feature solo or thematic presentations. Prizes are awarded to the best pavilion—this year it's Germany, which hosts a harrowing performance work by the young artist Anne...
Related Video & Audio Inside the Stately Home Exhibiting Damien Hirst’s Most Iconic Works 15 May 2018, AnOther Magazine The notion of 'Britishness' has long been underpinned by a tangle of contradictions; evocative of both the aristocratic establishment, and its countercultural underside.
