Damien Hirst, World’s Wealthiest Artist, Claims $1.7 Million in Authorities Help

Conceptual artist Damien Hirst, who has made a profession of elevating eyebrows with works comparable to these respectively comprising a useless tiger shark suspended in a Lucite tank full of formaldehyde and a human cranium produced from platinum and paved with diamonds, has finished it once more—although this time by way of a fiscal, relatively than inventive, endeavor. Hirst, whose private wealth is estimated at roughly $396 million, utilized for and obtained £1.3 million ($1.7 million) in authorities pandemic reduction assist by means of his firm Science (UK) Ltd. In keeping with the Every day Mail, the enterprise, by means of which Hirst employs quite a lot of studio assistants to assist him churn out his Spot and Cherry Blossom work, reaped a reported £18.2 million ($24 million) throughout the Covid disaster, turning an astounding £3.5 million ($4.6 million) revenue in 2020, with gross sales leaping within the first months of the disaster.
The Observer moreover reviews that Science (UK) Ltd.in 2021 obtained a three-year, £15 million ($20 million) Covid emergency mortgage imply to cowl enterprise interruption and provided by the British authorities. On the time, the corporate’s artwork holdings have been valued at £42.7 million ($56 million). Hirst laid off sixty-three employees throughout the identical span of time. Hirst, a Turner Prize winner and maybe probably the most infamous of the YBAs (Younger British Artists), who gained fame within the late Eighties, in 2018 laid off fifty studio employee with a purpose to “get again to an easier manner of working,” as a Science (UK) Ltd. spokesperson advised The Artwork Newspaper that yr.