Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in 1965. From 1986 to 1989 Hirst attended a course in liberal art at Goldsmiths College in London, because it did not focus on a single art genre but covered all genres. In 1988 Damien Hirst became famous with the exhibition 'Freeze', for which he and other young British artists presented their works in an empty storage hall in London's docklands. This exhibition was also the beginning of Damien Hirst's constant support by the art collector and advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi, who has since regularly shown Hirst's work in his exhibition 'Young British Artists'. In 1990 Hirst held his first own exhibition entitled 'In and Out of Love' at the Woodstock Street Gallery in London. Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art (London) and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris followed that same year. In 1992 Damien Hirst was nominated for the renowned Turner Prize for a piece of art showing a 14 foot tiger shark in a Basin filled with formaldehyde. Further formaldehyde installations followed in 1994. 'Away from the Flock', a sheep in a water tank filled with formaldehyde, caused public outcry and was even covered with black ink by an angry visitor. The controversy surrounding the British artist reached its peak, when Damien Hirst received the Turner Prize for his animal installations in 1994. In the following years, Hirst showed further animal installations, which achieved top prices on the art market. In 1996 Hirst's first short film 'Hanging around' came out, he opened a restaurant and produced pop songs. In 1996, aged 33, Damien Hirst published his autobiography. In 2000 a spectacular exhibition featuring Hirst's works was opened in New York. Over the past few years, Damien Hirst's main focus has been on photo realistic painting.

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