Isovanillin
Isovanillin
Signed Print
Damien Hirst
£10,500-£16,000Value Indicator
$22,000-$35,000 Value Indicator
$19,000-$30,000 Value Indicator
¥100,000-¥160,000 Value Indicator
€12,500-€19,000 Value Indicator
$110,000-$170,000 Value Indicator
¥1,990,000-¥3,040,000 Value Indicator
$14,000-$21,000 Value Indicator
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
There aren't enough data points on this work for a comprehensive result. Please speak to a specialist by making an enquiry.
Medium: Woodcut
Edition size: 55
Year: 2011
Size: H 50cm x W 64cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 2022 | Sotheby's Online | United Kingdom | |||
| December 2017 | Christie's New York | United States |
Meaning & Analysis
Isovanillin is a woodcut print from Damien Hirst’s 40 Woodcut Spots series from 2011. The print shows various coloured spots arranged methodically into three rows of four. Each spot is a different colour and every print in the series represents a unique set of colour combinations.
When Hirst’s first spot paintings appeared in the Freeze exhibition of 1988, this marked a turning point in the artist’s career where he began to employ assistants to create the spot paintings. As artificial as the chemicals and drugs that the titles take their inspiration from, the spot paintings appear to have been produced mechanically and without human intervention. Despite their deceiving simplicity, these works are laborious and painstaking to produce.
Fascinated by intuitive colour choice from his days at Goldsmiths, Hirst claims that the spot paintings have removed any problems he previously had with colour, allowing him to present a perfect arrangement of colour that is never repeated. Hirst explains that, “mathematically, with the spot paintings, I probably discovered the most fundamentally important thing in any kind of art. Which is the harmony of where colour can exist on its own, interacting with other colours in a perfect format.”
Damien Hirst, born in Bristol in 1965, is often hailed the enfant terrible of the contemporary art world. His provocative works challenge conventions and his conceptual brilliance spans installations, paintings, and sculptures, often exploring themes of mortality and the human experience. As a leading figure of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement in the late '80s, Hirst's work has dominated the British art scene for decades and has become renowned for being laced with controversy, thus shaping the dialogue of modern art.
