ABOUT

Damien Hirst is one of the defining figures of contemporary British art and a leading member of the Young British Artists who reshaped the London art scene in the late 1980s. Working across sculpture, installation, painting and printmaking, he has built a provocative practice around some of the most fundamental questions of human existence.

Death, belief, desire and mortality run throughout Hirst’s work. From animals preserved in formaldehyde and his iconic Spot Paintings to For the Love of God (2007), a platinum skull set with 8,601 diamonds, he repeatedly confronts the tension between beauty and decay, science and faith, value and impermanence. Butterflies, pharmaceuticals and medical imagery have likewise become recurring elements of his visual language.

Hirst first gained significant attention in 1988 while studying at Goldsmiths College, when he curated Freeze, the landmark exhibition closely associated with the emergence of the Young British Artists. His career subsequently developed on an international scale, with major exhibitions and retrospectives presenting his work to audiences worldwide.

In 2008, Hirst challenged the conventional gallery system with Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, an auction of new works held directly at Sotheby’s. The event became another defining moment in a career characterized by a continual questioning of the boundaries between art, commerce, spectacle and cultural value.