Damien Hirst: Galleria Borghese

Damien Hirst enters into creative conversation with the many masterpieces of the Galleria Borghese

In an extraordinary cultural undertaking, British artist Damien Hirst (born 1965) has launched an intense and unfiltered interaction with the works of Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, Bernini, Canova and others in Italy’s Galleria Borghese. An unparalleled and controversial celebrity of the contemporary art world, Hirst’s work is perfectly suited to be displayed in relation to the colors and materials found in the Galleria Borghese. His sculptures, made of fine materials such as bronze, Carrara marble or seductive malachite, have been put on display in rooms of the museum that house masterpieces of the modern era such as the statuary groups of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Antonio Canova’s Paolina Borghese. The resulting effect is one of surprising harmony: the Five Grecian Nudes appear natural next to Canova’s sculpture and the primitive appearance of the Lion Women of Asit Mayor is in perfect chromatic accord with the floors of the Galleria. Hirst’s new series of Colour Space paintings offers the same sense of continuity as the flow of the works hanging in the museum’s picture gallery. This comprehensive vision of the past and the present is fostered by the proximity of antique painting and contemporary painting, without frames to separate them, and without elements of signage to interrupt this immersion.