Fondazione Prada support Damien Hirst in his new charity campaign in aid of Save the Children’s program for education in Italy. Damien Hirst has created four new limited edition prints to be released today, 15th September 2020, from 16:00 CEST to raise money for Save the Children’s project “Riscriviamo il futuro” (Rewrite the future), which aims to support Italian children from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been affected by school closures during the COVID-19 crisis.
The editions, titled Fruitful and Forever, feature bright, abstract details from Hirst’s new series of Cherry Blossoms paintings. Depicting blossom trees in full bloom, the series is inspired by the work of Pierre Bonnard, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and the Pointillist innovations of Georges Seurat. The new limited edition prints show close-up details of the densely layered and colourful dabs of paint from sections of the large-scale canvases.
The editions are available to buy through HENI Leviathan from 16:00 CEST on Tuesday 15 September until midnight CEST on Sunday 27 September 2020. The number of editions produced will be limited by demand during this time period. Each image is available in two sizes (39 x 39 cm and 78 x 78 cm) and priced at EUR 400 and EUR 1,200 respectively. To purchase the prints, visit leviathan.heni.com
As stated by Damien Hirst,
“COVID-19 has been devastating for many people and families all over the world and lockdown has been really difficult, but especially difficult for children who haven’t been able to go to school. I wanted to find a way to raise money to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been most affected by school closures and the support they provide. I’m delighted to be working with Fondazione Prada to release these new prints to help with the brilliant work Save the Children are doing across Italy, giving free access to education and opportunities to thousands and thousands of children in need.”
All profits from the sales of the prints will be donated to Save the Children, a global charity committed to improving the lives of children through better education, health care and economic opportunities. Save the Children’s Italian campaign “Riscriviamo il futuro” is an ambitious program created to offer education, opportunities and support to children, teenagers and their families in the time of COVID-19. Launched in June 2020, “Riscriviamo il futuro” has already activated 90 educational spaces, called Spazi Futuro, for learning, socializing and playing, helping in the recovery of education lost due to isolation. It also supports schools by providing activities and educational kits, tablets and textbooks, to guarantee girls, boys and adolescents all they need to face the school year and to fight the risk of school dropout. The program helps vulnerable families by guaranteeing them a “dowry of care”, which will respond to basic immediate needs while, in the post-emergency, Save the Children will support families on a path towards independence that will lead to self-sufficiency, thanks to the networking with private and public actors, existing services and the support for job placement.
The Italian charity campaign follows the previous UK project “The Rainbow Editions” realized by Damien Hirst last May to support the British NHS Charities Together and The Felix Project during the Coronavirus crisis.
As stated by Daniela Fatarella, CEO of Save the Children Italy,
”We are thrilled with the support that Damien Hirst and Fondazione Prada decided to give to Save the Children and our project ‘Riscriviamo il futuro’. There is a need to respond to the high risk of increasing child educational poverty and early school leaving, after the educational blackout that has affected so many students who have not been able to access distance learning in our country. Thanks to these unique works by Damien Hirst, art, which in our projects is often one of the key levers for the harmonic growth of children, will also be an important tool that will enable to continue to support thousands of children and adolescents who have been hard hit by the Coronavirus emergency and the resulting socio-economic crisis”
Fondazione Prada has enthusiastically joined Damien Hirst’s initiative by offering its support in promoting the charity project in aid of Save The Children, in the belief that education and culture represent a driving force for the development of the new generations, especially at a time of crisis and uncertainty.
About the Artist
Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths college from 1986 to 1989, and whilst in his second year, he conceived and curated the group exhibition, ‘Freeze’. The show is commonly acknowledged to have been the launching point not only for Hirst, but for a generation of British artists.
Since the late 1980s, Hirst has created installations, sculptures, paintings and drawings that explore the complex relationships between art, beauty, religion, science, life and death. Through work that includes the iconic shark in formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) and For the Love of God (2007), a platinum cast of a skull set with 8,601 flawless pavé-set diamonds, he investigates and challenges contemporary belief systems, and dissects the uncertainties at the heart of human experience. In April 2017, he presented his most complex project to date, “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable”, across two museum spaces in Venice. Exceptional in scale, “Treasures” examines ideas surrounding truth, authenticity and how we construct belief.
His work features in major collections including the British Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate, the Stedelijk Museum, the Yale Center for British Art, The Broad Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Collezione Prada, and Museo Jumex, among many others. damienhirst.com
