Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst was born in Bristol, England in 1965 and studied at Leeds College of Art and Goldsmiths.
Hirst is mainly known as a 'conceptual artist' who preserved dead animals in formadelhyde. He is also identified as a painter, known for his 'spin' and 'spot paintings, though reputedly he did little of his own painting through the 1990s, giving that job to his assistants. His 'spot' paintings were done by assistants because he "couldn't be fucking arsed doing it"; he described his efforts as "shite".

Hirst was controversial and high profile through the 1990s and was a member of the renowned group, the 'Young British Artists' . His notoriety was at a high when he launched his career at Saatchi Gallery's first Young British Artists show with the work titled 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'. This work was a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine. The work became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, but it also attracted much negative attention.
The creation of the shark piece was made possible through the patronage of art collector, Charles Saatchi, who had agreed to fund whatever Hirst wanted to make. The shark cost approximately $9,000 and sold for over $70,000. In December 2004,' The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' was sold by Saatchi to American collector Steve Cohen, for $12 million, in a deal negotiated by Hirst's New York agent, Gagosian. Hirst is considered the richest living artist to date.
In 1995, Hirst won the Turner Prize with the work titled 'Two Fucking and Two Watching' which featured a rotting cow and bull. This work was banned from exhibition in New York by public health officials.
Apparently Hirst does his own paintings now including the ones for his 'No Love Lost, Blue Paintings' exhibition at the Wallace Collection, London in 2009.However it is said to have attracted "one of the most unanimously negative responses to any exhibition in living memory".(Mark Hudson. "It couldn't get worse for Damien Hirst", The Daily Telegraph, 14 October 2009).

http://www.damienhirst.com/

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