"For Hirst, famous pickler of sharks and bovine bisector, all his art is about death. This piece, which was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought in London, was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise. 'I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,' he recalls. 'Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.'"

New York Times - Damien Hirst: The Iceman Cometh

"The impulses driving Damien Hirst's work stem from dilemmas inherent in human life: 'I am aware of mental contradictions in everything, like: I am going to die and I want to live for ever. I can't escape the fact and I can't let go of the desire'. The materials he uses often shock, but he says he 'uses shock almost as a formal element . not so much to thrust his work in the public eye . but rather to make aspects of life and death visible'."

Tate Gallery - Turner Prize History - Damien Hirst

In 1965 Damien Hirst was born in Bristol. He attended the Goldsmith College in London from 1986 to 1989 to study the only course of Fine Art that dealt with different genres. The first time Hirst, and some of his fellow students, attracted attention was as early as in 1988 with their exhibition "Freeze" which they presented in an empty warehouse in the dock area of London. In this exhibition Charles Saatchi, the famous art collector and advertising tycoon , recognised Hirst's talent and started to regularly present Hirst's works in his exhibition "Young British Artists". Saatchi became Hirst's most important sponsor.

In 1990 Damien Hirst continued to show his artworks in single exhibitions in the Woodstock Street Gallery in London, the Institute of Contemporary Art (London) and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. Hirst received a nomination for the renowned Turner Prize for his work 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living', a 14-feet long shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine. In 1994 another formaldehyde installation called 'Away from the Flock' showing a sheep in a tank caused a scandal with a disgruntled visitor pouring black ink into it. The controversary about the British artist reached its peak when Hirst received the Turner Prize in 1994 for his animal installations. At the same time these installations achieved premium prices on the art market. However, as early as 2 years later the public started to lose its interest in the artist with the tendency to self-aggrandizement.

Hirst began experimenting with other areas, in 1996 he presented his first short movie "Hanging Around", he opened a restaurant and produced pop songs. In 1996 Damien Hirst published his biography at the age of 33. Coverage of Hirst increased only in 2000 when a spectacular exhibiton with his works opened in New York. In the last years Damien Hirst has focused on photorealistic painting.

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