Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst, born 1965 in Bristol, lives and works in London. With works known for both their formal beauty and their shock value, Hirst has made some of the most-discussed artist of the 90s. Hirst's work suggests the transience of life. His sealed-up vitrines-as-mausoleums encourage the viewer to reflect on time and vast cycles of mortality, not only within the sculpture but all around us. Since 1988, Hirst has also been making his famous Dot Paintings, a series of works that involve color systems and geometrical order. These paintings form a fascinating parallel to his sculptures, and provide an encoded window onto his thinking. In the paintings, Hirst plays with rules and randomness by setting up an open, but highly structured system. All the paintings have a regular grid of solid, arbitrarily colored dots. Though his paintings do not resemble his sculptures, they are not dissimilar in content: Hirst attempts to imbue abstract elements of painting with his sense of the awfulness, or at least the arbitrariness, of life.
Damien Hirst Editions
Fruitful H8-2
2020
Beautiful Forty Winks
2014
Beautiful You Drive Me Crazy
2014
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (Lenticular Shark)
2013
Untitled
2007
Painting by Numbers 2
2001
Pharmaceutic Wall Painting, Five Blacks
1993
Unique Works
Fruitful H8-2
2020
Laminated Giclée print on aluminium composite panel, 39 x 39 cm. Edition of 3,308, digitally signed and numbered.
Damien Hirst's Edition Fruitful (H8-2) is highlights abstract details from the artist's Cherry Blossoms series (2018-2020). Inspired by artists such as Bonnard, Monet, and Van Gogh, the series moves between abstraction and figuration. In Fruitful, Hirst enlarges a color passage of the large-format painting Cherry Blossoms, impressively highlighting the impasto interplay of white, pink, and green tones on a dark background. Created in 2020 in collaboration with the Fondazione Prada to support Italian children affected by COVID-19 school closures, the work captivates with its dense color structure and its almost tactile impasto.
EUR 1,800
Beautiful Forty Winks
2014
Spin painted chair (Jasper Morrison), household gloss on beech, 79 x 40.6 x 42.7 cm. Unique, signed underneath the seat.
This piece is part of Hirst’s larger body of Spin works, in which he spins the canvas – in this case, a chair designed by Jasper Morrison – while applying paint, creating dynamic vortexes of colour, or in this case, black and white. The chair is one of a kind, with bold contrasts and monochrome splatters emphasizing key formal elements seen throughout the artist’s wider practice. Additionally, the choice to use a pre-existing, industrially produced chair aligns with Hirst’s ongoing exploration of found objects in his work.
Beautiful You Drive Me Crazy
2014
Spin painted chair (Jasper Morrison), household gloss on beech, 79 x 40.6 x 42.7 cm. Unique, signed underneath the seat.
This piece is part of Hirst’s larger body of Spin works, in which he spins the canvas – in this case, a chair designed by Jasper Morrison – while applying paint, creating dynamic vortexes of color. Each chair is one of a kind, with vivid hues and splattered paint reflecting key formal elements seen throughout the artist’s wider practice. Additionally, the choice to use a pre-existing, industrially produced chair aligns with Hirst’s ongoing exploration of found objects in his work.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (Lenticular Shark)
2013
Digital lenticular print in colours with digitally printed cutout overlay, on PETG plastic, 80 x 120 cm, framed. Edition of 150, signed and numbered.
With this edition, Damien Hirst revisits his perhaps most iconic artwork, originally conceived in 1991, featuring a shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde. The lenticular print medium allows the shark to seemingly come to life, shifting and moving within its aquatic confines as the viewer moves around the artwork. This optical illusion creates a similarly visceral effect as the original installation, enabling viewers to experience the predator in an amplified sense of three-dimensional presence.
Untitled
2007
From Re-Object/Mythos
Copper plate etching printed in 48 colors on Hahnemühle rag paper, 81.5 x 61 cm (32¼ x 24 in). Edition of 45, signed and numbered.
This edition is part of Damien Hirst’s iconic series of Spot Paintings or Pharmaceutical Paintings. About these works, Hirst has said: “My Spot Paintings are a scientific approach to painting, much like the scientific approach of pharmaceutical companies to life. Hence the title of the series, The Pharmaceutical Paintings.” Further, the artist has explained, “art is like medicine – it can heal. Yet I’ve always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don’t believe in art, without questioning either.”
This particular work is part of a portfolio of prints published by Edition Schellmann on the occasion of two exhibitions held at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Re-Object and Mythos.
Painting by Numbers 2
2001
Box with stretched canvas, 90 enamel paints and brushes. Canvas: 48.5 x 43.2 x 2.5 cm, box: 54 x 80 x 11.5 cm. Edition of 175, stamp-signed on back of canvas, signed and numbered on box lid.
With this edition, Damien Hirst invites his audience to create their own version of his iconic Spot Paintings. The 9 x 10 pre-drawn circles on the canvas correspond to the enclosed 9 x 10 small tubs of different-colored paint, enabling the owner to execute the piece exactly as envisioned by the artist. This work is not only a playful nod to popular children's coloring books, but also serves as a reflection on the authenticity of painting itself, especially given Hirst’s well-known practice of employing studio assistants to execute his works.
Pharmaceutic Wall Painting, Five Blacks
1993
From Wall Works
Wall painting in enamel paint; size variable. Limited to 10 installations, each unique in color combination, with a signed and numbered certificate.
This large-scale edition is part of Damien Hirst’s series of Spot Paintings, which are central to his oeuvre. Characterized by a systematic arrangement of uniformly sized, vibrant dots of color in a grid pattern, the dots are meticulously applied in a precise, serial manner, creating a sense of order and repetition. Visually, they evoke the appearance of pharmaceutical pills and thus fit within the artist’s larger body of works related to pharmaceuticals and medicine cabinets. The works explore themes of perception, mechanization, and the relationship between art and science, while also serving as a commentary on the industrialization of art. The serial nature of the paintings reflects Hirst’s fascination with systematic categorization and the impersonal, almost clinical nature of modern life, drawing parallels between the repetition of the dots and the regulated, often repetitive processes within the medical and pharmaceutical industries.
About these works, Hirst has said: “My Spot Paintings are a scientific approach to painting, much like the scientific approach of pharmaceutical companies to life. Hence the title of the series, The Pharmaceutical Paintings.” Further, the artist has explained, “art is like medicine – it can heal. Yet I’ve always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don’t believe in art, without questioning either.”
Beautiful Flavour of the Month
2014
Spin painted table, household gloss on beech, 75 x 75 x 74 cm. Unique, signed underneath top.
Damien Hirst created this work in 2014 as a special commission for Schellmann Art. Like all of the artist's spin works, this piece is unique – but beyond that, this is also the only spin table the artist has created to date. Spinning the table while applying black and white paint, the artist created dynamic monochrome vortexes – striking as a standalone piece or in combination with his spin chairs.
