Damien Hirst: Drawings

Shockingly creative! A groundbreaking collection of Damien Hirst’s sketchbooks, drawings, and plans.

A tiger shark in formaldehyde. A diamond-encrusted skull. Damien Hirst is one of the most important contemporary artists and a legend in the Young British Artist movement of the 1990s. Since the early 1980s, Hirst has planned his iconic paintings, sculptures, and installations through drawings and sketchbooks, and these can now be seen in a museum exhibition for the first time.

These works provide an opportunity to glance over the shoulder of a great contemporary artist in the middle of his creative process. Since the early 1980s, Damien Hirst has used drawings and sketches to plan his celebrated works. Hirst has also created drawings to accompany his paintings and sculptures, to help visualize their core ideas. Among his designs are a drawing machine and the graphic work of fictitious old masters. In this superbly produced new volume, which retains the character of a sketchbook, a star artist reveals a new aspect to his oeuvre.

Ralph Gleis, for many years director of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, has been general director of the Albertina in Vienna since 2025. Elsy Lahner is a curator for contemporary art at the Albertina in Vienna.