Born in Bristol in 1965 Damien Hirst is a Blue Chip artist and poster boy of the Young British Artists. The YBA movement was an entrepreneurial group of Goldsmiths graduates rising to fame through sensation, shock and spectacle and dominated the London art scene throughout the 90s.
Since notoriously curating "Freeze" in 1988, exhibiting alongside Goldsmith's graduates including Tracey Emin, Hirst has become one of the most ground-breaking and wealthiest british artists of all time, with individual works going under the hammer for over 9.7 Million GBP.
Instantly recognised for exhibiting dead animals preserved in formaldehyde, Hirst has since the turn of the millennium embarked on several important series of works including kaleidoscopic Butterfly Paintings, Spot Paintings, through to "The Wreck of the Unbelievable" in 2017, which filled the Palazzo Grassi in Venice with monumental sculptures made of precious metals and stones encrusted with barnacles.
During the "Freeze" exhibitions Hirst included two of his Spot Paintings (1986- ) painted in gloss directly onto the warehouse walls, this began a series of which there are now over 1000 works.
"People are afraid of change, so you create a kind of belief for them through repetition. It's like breathing."
Hirst was awarded The Turner Prize in 1995, In 2012 Hirst was recognised by a major retrospective at The Tate Modern in London.
The Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy presented Hirst's major solo Retrospective "The Agony and the Ecstasy" in 2014.
