Style of Damien Hirst, Large Painting on Canvas. Indistinctly signed bottom right. Title on stretcher: "Summer Bloom - Again." 

Overall: 48 1/4 X 60 1/2 in. 

Sight: 47 1/2 X 59 3/4 in. 

#2765 . 

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol, England in 1965. He is known for his conceptual works with medical, pharmaceutical, animal and life-cycle themes. He studied at Leeds College of Art and Design and was a student at Goldsmiths College, University of London where he received a fine art degree in 1989. During that period, he worked in a mortuary, which influenced his subsequent art expression. In 1988, while at Goldsmiths, he converted an abandoned London Docklands warehouse into an exhibition and curated the Freeze exhibition that featured other young independent, conceptual artists. His unique installations, often noted for their shock arousal, first got public attention in the early 1990s, when he became part of a group of avant-garde men and women known as “Young British Artists.”  In 1994 he gained international acclaim (and criticism) for his first one-person exhibition titled “Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away.” During the show an angry artist vandalized one of the pieces, Away From The Flock, by pouring ink into the formaldehyde, which was preserving the body of a sheep. Hirst successfully prosecuted the man and was reimbursed for the damage, but later stated the publicity from the incident was more valuable than any monetary judgment he could have received. In the 2000s several of his works were destroyed in a warehouse fire, while others around New York City got him fined for displaying “rotting preserved animals.” After an interview in 2010 where he stated that he saw the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center as a kind of performance art, his welcome wore thin in the New York art scene, and he retreated to his home in Devon with his wife and two children. He continues to produce art intended to shock, although he has also painted flowers, geometric shapes, and other subjects intended simply to “make the audience question, whatever the question may be.”