Hirst is the wealthiest artist in the World, and this is due to his own talent as well as to the people around him. Hirst became a multimillionaire in his early 30s by selling cabinets full of colored pills and animals preserved in formaldehyde. This probably would not have been possible without the support of Larry Gagosian, his influential art dealer in New York, and that of Jay Jopling, the owner of the White Cube gallery in London. For years, they both held important positions in the annual classification of the most important people in the Art World, published in Art Review magazine. We should also not forget that it was Hirst himself who was number one on the list in 2008.

Some of his exploits are worth studying in schools of marketing, for example the sale of a human skull made of platinum and diamonds for 74,000,000 Euros. This piece was not even made personally by him, like so many others of his creations. A well-known London jeweller was responsible for modelling the life-sized bones and inlaying them with more than 8,000 diamonds, with a total weight of 1,100 carats.

The artist has created an emporium that employs some 100 people who he calls “my workers.” They are the ones responsible for giving expression to Hirst’s ideas in any of the three workshops he owns for creating paintings, sculptures and installations that are later avidly fought for by the rich art collectors who visit the White Cube. In these workshops, in 2007, it was also necessary to produce a new version of “Mother and Child Divided,” a work of art that consists of the dead bodies of a cow and a calf, both cut in half. The original work, dated in 1993, was too damaged to be shown in public at the retrospective exhibit held by the Tate Modern Gallery with all of the winners of the Turner Prize for Contemporary Art. A year earlier Hirst’s workers also had had to replace a shark that had decomposed due to similar circumstances. This piece is called “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Alive,” and the American art collector Steve Cohen paid more than 9,000,000 Euros for it.

All of this forms part of the controversy that has helped to turn Damian Hirst into one of the most valued artists in the world. His fortune is estimated at more than 300 million Euros, and it is not unusual for sales at the White Cube exhibits to exceed 100 million Euros each time.

Hirst’s artistic training started with industrial design, with a degree from the University of Leeds. Later he studied Fine Arts in London. The notable theme of most his work refers to life as a sort of paradox with respect to death, and death is nothing more than another part of existence.

Although most of his collectors prefer to remain anonymous, it is known that among them can be found the royal family of Qatar, as well as international investment groups who save Hirst’s works for a time in order to make huge profits on resales years later.