BOSTON, MA.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) presents a select overview of four paintings and three sculptures by Damien Hirst from 1994 through 2004 from various collections. One of today’s most influential and controversial artists, Hirst has created a thoughtful and provocative body of work that addresses such traditional and historical themes as mortality, love, and spiritual redemption. Many of his works draw connections between religious iconography, medical science and natural history, and the conceptual tenets of recent art movements including Minimalism. A Selection of Works by Damien Hirst from Various Collections provides an introduction to the major developments in the artist’s career through seven works, including an early medicine cabinet and a recent spin painting, as well as The Collector (2003–04) — a new work that was recently presented in the exhibition In-A-Gadda-da-Vida at Tate Britain in May of last year.

As a student at Goldsmith’s College, Damien Hirst burst onto the art scene in 1989 with an exhibition he curated called Freeze, and has been a forceful figure in contemporary art ever since. His 1991 solo exhibition at the ICA, London brought his work to a wider audience, but it was his exhibition of the sculpture The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) in The Saatchi Gallery’s Young British Artists exhibition the following year that brought him notoriety and the attention of the general public. Hirst was instrumental in the rise of British art throughout the 1990s, and he helped pave the way for other artists of his generation.

Many of Hirst’s works — from his spot paintings and circular “spin” paintings to animals in glass vitrines — are now widely recognized cultural icons. A Selection of Works by Damien Hirst from Various Collections features Is Nothing Sacred (1997), a medicine cabinet filled with colorful medicine bottles and boxes; and the colorful spin painting, Beautiful, cataclysmic pink minty shifting horizon exploding star with ghostly presence, wide, broad painting (2004). Also seen for the first time in this country will be The Collector (2003–04), an elaborate new installation of live butterflies, plants, and a robotic “collector.” Significant loans from The Broad Art Foundation have made this exhibition possible and include the early iconic work, Away from the Flock (1994), the recent butterfly painting, The Unbearable Likeness of Being (2003), and Beautiful, cataclysmic pink minty shifting horizon exploding star with ghostly presence, wide, broad painting (2004).