DAMIEN HIRST (Bristol, UK, 1965). "Rhodotorulic Acid," 2011-2012. Woodcut, copy 26/55. Signed in the lower right corner. Justified on verso. Framing label on verso. Measurements: 16 x 15.5 cm; 22 x 22 cm (frame). The etching "Rhodotorulic Acid" belongs to Damien Hirst's well-known series entitled "Spot Prints". It features a single spot of color meticulously placed on a white background. The essentialist appearance of the work embodies key aspects of Hirst's artistic approach: scientific references, minimalism, seriality and randomness. The circular form evokes infinity and eternity, life and death being part of the same cycle. At the same time, they refer to cells and their mutations. Also, the title refers to a real organic compound, a red pigment produced by a fungus. This connection with science and nature is a hallmark of Hirst's work, who often explores the relationship between art and the natural world, the micro and the macro, as well as dreams of immortality. Damien Hirst was born in Bristol on June 7, 1965, in an economically challenged 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 be educated 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 abandoned to move to London. During this time he was working in construction and in turn applying to various art schools such as St Martins, or the faculty of Wales. He was finally accepted at Golsdmiths College, which, at the same time, and 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 of studies, Hirst, acquired the role of artist and curator, and managed to make an exhibition that would change the course of British art, it was his first solo exhibition with only 26 years. 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 he had no place left to exhibit, he had done it all and too fast. So soon the media baptized him with the name Hooligan Genius. Although he became a millionaire at the age of 40, Hirst's hypersensitivity became suspect; wrapped in an aura of romanticism, he made revolutionizing the art world look easy. Damien Hirst has works in the MoMA in New York, the Tate Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Palazzo Gras in Venice, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Germany), the Hirshhorn in Washington D.C. and the Neu Galerie in Graz (Austria), among other important public and private collections.