Name: Amniotic Fluid
Brand: Damien Hirst
Rating: 5 (231 reviews)

Track auction value trend

Damien Hirst's Amniotic Fluid, a signed Woodcut from 2012, is estimated to be worth between £4,700 and £7,000. This artwork has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 39%. This is a rare piece with an auction history of three total sales since its initial sale in November 2016. In the last 12 months, the hammer price has varied from £3,770 in January 2021 to £3,830 in September 2022. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 55.

Auction Date

Auction House

Location

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

September 2022

Sotheby's Online

United Kingdom

January 2021

Phillips London

United Kingdom

November 2016

Bonhams Knightsbridge

United Kingdom

Meaning & Analysis

Amniotic Fluid is a woodcut print from Damien Hirst’s 40 Woodcut Spots series from 2011, released in a limited edition of 55. The print shows a perfect circle in red, positioned in the centre of the square composition. Set against a plain white backdrop, this print appears like a drastically cropped version of one of Hirst’s more recognisable spot paintings. As a result, Amniotic Fluid is decidedly abstract.

This print is highly simplistic and immediate in its effect on the viewer, unambiguous in its depiction of a large spot with bright and flattened colour. Due to its smooth surface and obvious composition, this print deceptively removes any sense of human labour or touch. In the 1980s, the spot paintings marked a shift in Hirst’s artistic career, where he began to employ assistants to complete the painstaking and laborious task of producing these works. The apparent lack of human intervention in these works further emphasises the mathematical precision that underlines their compositions.

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.”