DAMIEN HIRST (Bristol, UK, 1965). "Ala-Met," 2011-2012. Woodcut, specimen 44/55. Signed in the lower right corner. Justified on verso. With framing label on verso. Measurements: 79 x 73 cm; 87 x 70 cm (frame). "Ala-Met" is a woodcut print by Damien Hirst belonging to his "40 Woodcut Spots" series, created in 2011. It is characterized by its minimalism and its visual play with repetition and color. Conceptually, it is an ironic yet profound commentary on the pharmaceutical industry, the massive use of pills of all colors to save us from any kind of ailment, etc. This connection between science and minimal abstraction is a hallmark of Hirst's work, who often explores themes linked to human vanity and our puerile dreams of immortality. For the original series of pharmaceutical paintings, Hirst invented a grid with a single rule: in each work, all colors could be used only once. 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 is classless. 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.