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« Cherry Blossoms » is Damien Hirst’s first institutional exhibition in France.
The Bristol-born 1965 English artist is widely known for his provocative works from his grandmother’s medicine cabinet to his diamond-set skulls and flies.
In a completely different style, he is now exhibiting a very fine series of flowering trees at the Foundation Cartier in Paris. Four rooms are dedicated to it, two of them open to the light of the garden and the other two into the privacy of the basement.
Damien Hirst has produced, on this bucolic and floral theme, one hundred and seven canvases, twenty nine of which are in large format.
Never before revealed to the public, these works were produced over three years and completed in November 2020. Damien Hirst, therefore painted some of his canvases during the period of confinement in his London studio on the banks of the Thames.
The pandemic gave the artist time to mature his creations to let his flowers invade his universe in multiple variations of hues and shapes. True physical work of the creator in his dialogue with immense nature, Damien Hirst exhibits his paintings without commentary in the form of simple panels, diptychs, triptychs and even quadriptychs and hexaptyches.
On the immaculate walls, it is a true hymn to color, a vibrant tribute to the beauty of cherry blossoms under a luminous sky.
View from Damien Hirst’s studio
© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.
All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates.