Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst (born 1965, Bristol, England) is one of the most prominent and widely discussed artists to emerge from the British art scene of the 1990s, and a central figure of the Young British Artists. His work addresses themes of mortality, beauty, and the relationship between science, medicine, and human experience with a directness and ambition that have made him one of the defining voices of contemporary art.
Educated at Goldsmiths College, London, Hirst first attracted significant attention with Freeze, an exhibition he curated as a student in 1988 that is widely regarded as the founding moment of the YBA movement. His practice spans installation, painting, sculpture, and works on paper, with recurring investigations into the iconography of medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, and the passage of time. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995. In 2008, he made an unprecedented move by selling a complete body of work directly at Sotheby’s, raising £111 million in a single sale and bypassing the traditional gallery system entirely.
His work is held in the collections of Tate, London, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., and the Rubell Museum, Miami.