Damien Hirst

He is often called the "bad boy" of British contemporary art: the works of Damien Hirst, true icons of the beginning of the 21st century, have left their mark on the collective mind. 

Damien Steven Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, England and grew up in Leeds. In 1984 he moved to London where he started working in construction. He studied at the Leeds College of Art between 1983 and 1985. He was not admitted at the Saint Martins School of Art, but in 1986 he was admitted at Goldsmiths College of Art where he studied until 1989, with professor Michael Craig-Martin among others. 

Damien Hirst began to think about the "unacceptable idea of death" during his teenage years. At Goldsmiths he started some of his most important series, such as the medicine cabinets. His observation that "science is the new religion for many people", is an idea that will be very present in his work. 

In 1988 Damien Hirst organized the famous "Freeze" exhibition at the London Docks with other students, an event that marked the beginning of the group later called the Young British Artists and the beginning of his own artistic career. It was on this occasion that he painted his first "Spot paintings" on the walls. In 2012, 11 of the Gagosian galleries around the world hold exhibitions showcasing only "spot paintings", materializing a "perverse and megalomaniacal" idea of the artist.

In 1991 he started his famous series "Natural History". With the financial support of Charles Saatchi, he produced "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", a glass box in which a tiger shark was exhibited, submerged in formaldehyde. The work is one of the artist's most famous ones, and an icon of 1990's art.

In the 2000s, he continued to explore important themes such as love, religion, death, beauty and science. In 2007 he exhibited the spectacular work "For the Love of God", a platinum cast of a human skull, set with 8601 diamonds, but with the original teeth. In 2008, when the markets collapsed, he organized an auction of his works at Sotheby's that brought in over $200 million.

In 2012, Tate Modern held a retrospective of Damien Hirst's work. In 2017, with the support of the Pinault Foundation, he exhibited in Venice, in several places, "Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable", a huge show of works produced between 2008 and 2016, which cost more than 50 million pounds.

In 1995 Damien Hirst received the prestigious Turner Prize. He lives and works between London, Gloucestershire and Devon.