Damien Hirst — H15 - the Archangels For Sale

Damien Hirst H15 - the Archangels Prints For Sale

Market Authority and Global Context

Damien Hirst remains the defining figure of contemporary British art, commanding institutional recognition and sustained collector demand across four decades of practice. Guy Hepner, New York, has facilitated $4,226,125 in Damien Hirst transactions, establishing direct market expertise in positioning works by this generation-defining artist.

Hirst's market credentials remain unparalleled among living British artists. His 2008 Sotheby's auction "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" achieved $198 million in total sales, an unprecedented single-artist event that fundamentally altered contemporary art market dynamics. As the leading figure of the Young British Artists movement, Hirst maintains representation with White Cube, while Science Ltd provides authentication services that ensure provenance integrity across his extensive catalogue.

Series Context and Conceptual Framework

The Archangels series, released in 2021, represents Hirst's sustained engagement with spiritual iconography and Western religious tradition. Comprising four works—Raphael, Uriel, Michael, and Gabriel—the series addresses the principal angelic figures recognized across Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theological frameworks. This thematic territory aligns with Hirst's career-long examination of mortality, transcendence, and the boundaries between physical existence and metaphysical belief systems.

Throughout his practice, Hirst has consistently investigated the intersection of science, religion, and human mortality. From the formaldehyde preservation of The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living to the pharmaceutical precision of his medicine cabinet works, Hirst interrogates the mechanisms through which humans confront finite existence. The Archangels extends this inquiry into explicitly sacred territory, positioning celestial intermediaries as subjects worthy of contemporary artistic examination.

The selection of these four specific archangels demonstrates deliberate theological engagement. Raphael, associated with healing; Uriel, linked to wisdom and light; Michael, the warrior protector; and Gabriel, the divine messenger—each figure carries distinct iconographic traditions spanning millennia of religious art history. Hirst's contemporary treatment positions these works within ongoing dialogues between historical devotional imagery and secular artistic practice.

Technical Specifications and Edition Structure

The Archangels series comprises giclée prints executed on archival fine art paper, demonstrating Hirst's commitment to museum-standard production values. Giclée printing technology, utilizing pigment-based inks and precision digital output, ensures exceptional color accuracy and archival longevity exceeding traditional photographic processes. This technical approach reflects Hirst's broader practice of employing industrial precision to achieve conceptual objectives.

Archival fine art paper substrates provide acid-free stability essential for long-term collection integrity. Institutional conservation standards recognize such materials as appropriate for permanent collection holdings, a consideration of increasing importance to collectors building multi-generational portfolios. The 2021 production date positions these works within Hirst's mature practice, executed with the technical infrastructure and quality control systems developed across decades of edition production.

Notable Works Within the Series

Raphael (H15-1) opens the series with reference to the archangel of healing, whose name translates as "God heals" in Hebrew tradition. This figure appears prominently in the Book of Tobit and has served as a subject for artists from Botticelli to Rembrandt, positioning Hirst's interpretation within extensive art historical precedent.

Uriel (H15-2) addresses perhaps the most mystical of the archangels, associated with light, wisdom, and divine presence. Uriel's relative absence from canonical texts compared to other archangels has historically granted artists greater interpretive freedom—a quality that aligns with Hirst's conceptual approach.

Michael (H15-3) engages the warrior archangel, depicted throughout Western art history in combat with satanic forces. This militaristic iconography connects with Hirst's broader examination of violence, protection, and existential threat.

Gabriel (H15-4) completes the series with the messenger archangel, the figure associated with annunciation and divine communication. Gabriel's role as intermediary between celestial and terrestrial realms resonates with Hirst's persistent interest in threshold states and transitional conditions.

Hirst's Practice in Context

Damien Hirst emerged as a defining figure of the Young British Artists movement in the late 1980s, building a body of work across painting, sculpture, and printmaking united by a sustained conceptual interest in mortality, science, medicine, and belief systems. His prints and editions extend the visual language developed across his sculptural and painted work — repetition, colour systems, and the tension between clinical precision and organic subject matter — into widely accessible reproducible form.

Hirst's work is held in the permanent collections of major museums worldwide, and his 2008 "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" single-artist auction at Sotheby's, which bypassed the traditional gallery system entirely, remains one of the most widely discussed events in the recent history of the contemporary art market.