A successful and controversial artist, Damien Hirst was born in Bristol, England, on June 7, 1965. He emerged as a leading figure in the Young British Artists (YBA) movement in the late 1980s and 1990s. His works with what have become his iconic images of spots, butterflies, cows, sharks, skulls, pills, and pharmacy cabinets have sold for exceptionally high prices. Hirst is one of the wealthiest artists living today.
His works, captivating and intense as they are, challenge our stereotyped concepts and beliefs. Damien Hirst’s shark, suspended in formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), is widely recognized, as are his real butterflies suspended in paint or thousands of butterfly wings arranged in a mandala-like pattern – the famous Damien Hirst butterfly paintings. Since 1986 he has been producing the Spot paintings (sometimes called Dot Paintings), a series of paintings with evocative pharmacological titles, which display lines of colored spots. Damien Hirst's Spot paintings and his Spin paintings became iconic series. Inspired by such diverse themes as life, death, art, science and medicine, Damien Hirst’s art takes a direct and challenging approach to ideas about existence. The energy and inventiveness are also to be found in Damien Hirst prints, which continue to stir controversy within the viewer with the same intensity.
With an auction sale record currently standing at close to $20 MILLION Hirst has certainly commanded high prices for his originals, however his Butterfly, Spot and Skull prints provide an affordable entry to his works. Hand signed and generally in small editions these represent a good investment as well as being instantly recognisable. We are delighted to consistently offer an excellent selection of his works in our central London gallery.