Damien Hirst

4000960Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst born 7 June 1965 is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the y (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s.[3] He is internationally renowned,[4] and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List.[5][6] During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.[7]

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works.[8][9] He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine (clear display case) became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s,[10] and the symbol of Britart worldwide.[11] He has also made "spin paintings," created on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly-coloured circles created by his assistants.

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Foreverkgki, at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries.] The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the