Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst was born on 7 June 1965 in Bristol, England, and grew up in Leeds. He studied at Jacob Kramer College of Art between 1983 and 1985, then at Goldsmiths' College, University of London, from 1986 to 1989, and continues to live and work in Devon and London. Over the course of a practice spanning painting, sculpture, and installation, Hirst has made mortality, biological process, scientific authority, and consumer spectacle the persistent subjects of some of the most discussed art produced in Britain since the 1990s.

Hirst's formaldehyde vitrines established his international reputation and remain central to any account of his work. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde within a glass-and-steel vitrine, announced the device that would define an entire body of sculpture. Mother and Child Divided (1993), presenting a cow and calf sectioned and preserved in separate vitrines, was shown at the 1993 Venice Biennale and became one of the defining images of 1990s British contemporary art. Away from the Flock (1994) extended the series with a preserved lamb, drawing on religious symbolism and the language of scientific display simultaneously. Later works in this lineage — For the Love of God (2007), a platinum skull set with diamonds, and The Golden Calf (2008), a gold-hooved bull calf in formaldehyde — pushed the intersection of mortality, luxury, and sacred iconography into increasingly elaborate territory. Alongside the vitrines, Hirst developed several serial painting practices: spot paintings, begun in the late 1980s and continued across subsequent decades, arrange grids of colored circles in ways that foreground delegated production and challenge conventional ideas of authorship; spin paintings apply paint to mechanically rotating surfaces, making chance and process visible; and butterfly works transform biological remains into radially symmetrical compositions in which beauty and death are inseparable. The installation In and Out of Love (1991) made biological process itself part of the artwork through live butterflies, while Pharmacy (1992) converted the visual order of medicine into an immersive environment. Hirst was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1992 and won it in 1995.

Hirst is represented by Gagosian in London, Paris, and Rome, and by White Cube in London, with Paul Stolper Gallery in London in a secondary capacity. His work is held by the Saatchi Collection, the Pinault Collection — exhibited at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana — Fondazione Prada in Milan, and the Broad Collection in Los Angeles. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include solo presentations at Château La Coste in 2024, at MUCA Munich in 2023, and at White Cube London in 2022, as well as Drawings at Albertina Modern, Vienna, opening in May 2025, which places sustained institutional attention on a medium less often foregrounded in public narratives about his practice. Solo exhibitions at HENI Gallery, London, and MMCA, Seoul, are scheduled for 2026, alongside the group exhibition Triple Trouble: Fairey, Hirst, Invader at Newport Street Gallery, London, running from October 2025 through March 2026.