Damien Hirst is a British artist born in Bristol in 1965.
He initially started his studies at Jacob Kramer College of Art and he finished them at Goldsmiths College of London. In 1988, still a student, his personality started to show and he organized an exhibition called “
Freeze
” showing the first “spot painting”. This event was the springboard for the Young British Artists, a group of visual artists who began to exhibit together and that quickly became famous for their shock tactics and their wild personal lives.
His passion for art developed pretty early but it was in the Nineties that his success exploded as his iconic style began to be recognizable all over the world. In 1995 he was also awarded with the Turner Prize, the most important achievement presented to a British visual artist.
He is known for his provocative works where death is often a recurring theme. An example are the shocking artworks where sharks, sheep and cows were stuffed and immersed in formaldehyde. He often focused on fundamental themes like love, pain, life and death, entering into dialogue with other disciplines such as medicine, science, religion, and history.
One of his most iconic artworks is "
For the Love of God"
, a human skull fully covered in 8’601 diamond that quickly became his most recognizable work: in 2008, in the midst of the global economic crisis, he organized the show “
Beautiful Inside My Head Forever
” at Sotheby's by auction, which in two days raised more than 111 million pounds. His major retrospectives were presented at Tate Modern in London and at Museo Archeologico of Naples while one of his most ambitious projects was in Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Later, in 2015, he opened his own gallery: Newport Street Gallery in London.
He is now considered the UK's richest living artist.
