Damien Hirst first gained acclaim and criticism for his Natural History series, which featured animals suspended in formaldehyde-filled steel-and-glass vitrines. Throughout his career, the English conceptual artist has explored themes of death, rebirth, morality, and beauty. Lamb is part of his Reverence Paintings, a group of works in which Hirst applied dabs of color and flecks of gold leaf to monochrome canvases. Built up through layered dots and marks, these paintings reflect his sustained interest in color, pattern, and serial structure—the foundation of his best-known Spot Paintings. Throughout his practice, Hirst draws from abstract expressionism, pop art, fauvism, and pointillism.
Hirst studied at Goldsmiths College, London, and was a member of the Young British Artists. He was the subject of his first solo exhibition at the Woodstock Street Gallery in 1991 and awarded the prestigious Tate Gallery Turner Prize in 1995. In 2012, the Tate Modern, London, presented Hirst’s first museum retrospective, and in 2015, he opened his own art space in London, the Newport Street Gallery.
