British artist Damien Hirst b.1965 is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s alongside Ian Davenport, Tracey Emin, Cornelia Parker, and Garry Hume. During the 1990s Hirst's career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but their relationship ended in 2003.
Hirst explores the tensions and uncertainties at the core of human experience. Love, desire, belief and the struggle of living with the knowledge of death are all investigated, often in unconventional and unexpected ways. The artist became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep, and a cow) are preserved, sometimes having been dissected, in formaldehyde. The best-known of these was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a clear display case.
