Damien Hirst Biography
Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol and raised in Leeds. In 1984 he moved to London, where he worked in construction before studying for a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths college from 1986 to 1989. Best known for a series of contradictory and provocative works, including animal bodies (such as sharks tiger, sheep and cows) embalmed and immersed in formaldehyde, display cases with pills or surgical instruments or "mandalas" made up of multicolored butterflies, or the famous skull covered in diamonds. Death is the central theme of his works. Hirst dominated the British art scene during the 1990s, bringing it to international prominence. Its rapid rise is closely linked to the closeness and promotion of the Anglo-Iraqi collector and advertiser Charles Saatchi, even if the continuous frictions between the two led to the end of the fruitful collaboration in 2003. The manifesto of his poetics is The Physical Impossibility Of Death In the Mind Of Someone Living (i.e., "The physical impossibility of death in the mind of a living person"), consisting of a tiger shark over 4 meters long placed in formaldehyde inside a showcase. That work became the symbol of British art of the nineties. The sale of the work in 2004 made Hirst the most expensive living artist after Jasper Johns. Intimately linked not only to the informal, but also to action painting and pop art, he is also known for his techniques called "spin paintings", created by painting on a rotating circular surface like vinyl on a turntable, and "spot paintings ", consisting of rows of colored circles, often imitated by advertising graphics in recent years. In 1995 Hirst won the Turner Prize, beating the other three finalists: Mona Hatoum, Callum Innes and Mark Wallinger, after having already been nominated in 1992. . Multifaceted and entrepreneur in 1997 he directed a video for Blur. Together with Matthew Freud and others, he opened Pharmacy, a bar-restaurant, in early 1998. Once Pharmacy closed, the furnishings, designed by Hirst, were all auctioned off. His approach to customers is also revolutionary, often bypassing the traditional channels of galleries and selling directly to the public through million-dollar auctions or dedicated art shops, for which the prolific serial production of spot-paintings or spin-paintings and the more modest works dimensions allow many gallery owners, but above all private individuals, to own a "prêt-à-porter" piece by Damien Hirst. Hirst's collaborations with fashion houses are channeled into an increasingly frequent trend of mixing between the worlds of art and style, sometimes blurring the boundaries (the "skull" motif or colored spots will be mainstream in clothing and in design). Hirst lives and works in London, Gloucestershire and Devon.
