DAMIEN HIRST (Bristol, United Kingdom, 1965). “Hypothalamus acetone powderâ€. Pencil drawings on

DAMIEN HIRST (Bristol, United Kingdom, 1965).
"Hypothalamus acetone powder".
Pencil drawings on silkscreen. Copy 56/128.
Enclosed certificate of authenticity issued by the Gagosian Gallery (London).
Presents dry stamp of the artist.
Signed and dedicated in pencil at the bottom.
Measurements: 149.9 x 134.6 cm; 158 x 142.5 cm (frame).
This silkscreen is intervened with pencil drawings by the artist located in the lower area. In a schematic and naïf way, they refer to different shapes that the artist has turned into personal icons: the skull, the shark, the heart and the butterfly. This intervention turns the work into a decalogue of Hirts career, dominated by his famous coloured dot composition, Hirst estimates to have produced around 1400 dot paintings since the genesis of the format in 1988. Minimalist in aesthetic, the dot paintings can be replicated in several colours, many times over. However, this simplicity should not be underestimated, as the significance of Hirst's Spot Paintings is complex and multifaceted.
During his time at Goldsmiths, Hirst began to experiment freely with colour, producing installations such as the little-known artwork 8 Pans (1987), comprising a set of 8 brightly coloured, laterally arranged pans. The young Hirst began to expand his use of colour, turning once again to painting, which he had largely abandoned in favour of unorthodox media such as found objects.

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol on 7 June 1965, in a financially troubled suburban environment. He never knew his biological father and his mother married a car salesman, who left them when Hirst was 13. His mother, an amateur artist and devout Christian, took care of him, but because of his father's abandonment he had to educate himself from the bottom up, which is perhaps the main reason why Damien Hirst argues that art has no class. He trained at the University of Leed while combining his studies with a job at the local mortuary, which he later left to move to London. During this time he was working in construction while also applying to various art schools such as St Martins and the Welsh College. He was eventually accepted at Golsdmiths College, which at the time, due to the economic recession in England, was a school that attracted bright students and creative tutors. While studying, Hirst financed his expenses by working on telephone surveys, a direct cause of his ability to fake any emotion over the phone. During his studies he also worked at McDonald's, and part-time at the Anthony D'Ofray gallery, where he learned the mechanics of the art market. Already in his second year, Hirst took on the role of artist and curator, and managed to stage an exhibition that would change the course of British art, his first solo exhibition at the age of 26. Four years later, in 1995, he won his second Turner Prize nomination for Mother and Child. At the age of 32, the Larry Gagosian Gallery offered him a major retrospective, after which he declared that there was nowhere left for him to exhibit, he had done it all and too quickly. As a result, he was soon dubbed Hooligan Genius by the media. Although he became a millionaire at the age of 40, Hirst's hypersensitivity became suspect: wrapped in an aura of romanticism, he made revolutionising the art world look easy. On several occasions he has acknowledged his desire to be famous and in the face of criticism he has defended himself with phrases such as "they couldn't admit to themselves that they wanted to be famous and resented not being famous" or "I think my desire was to be more famous than rich, I think the desire to create art and be famous is like the desire to live forever with two obsessions: death and celebrity".