Suiko H10-4

The Empresses series marks one of Damien Hirst's most focused engagements with his iconic butterfly motif, approaching the insect not as a mere spectacle, but as a formal structure. While his earlier Kaleidoscope works dazzle through sheer chromatic variety, the Empresses prints commit to a single, striking palette and push it to its absolute limit. Suiko relies entirely on crimson and black, with wings arranged into a mandala so precise it reads first as an elegant ornament, then as something closer to obsession.

The title refers to Empress Suiko, the first empress regnant of Japan, who ruled in the late sixth and early seventh centuries and presided over a period of profound cultural transformation. Hirst's choice of subject is deliberate, each Empress print in the series carries that specific weight, a historical name that reframes the viewer's perspective. The symmetry stops feeling arbitrary; the repetition starts feeling ceremonial.

Red does serious work here. It shifts from vibrant vermillion at the outer edges to an ink-like black at the center, pulling the eye inward through concentric rings of butterfly wings. There is a palpable tension between the beauty of the pattern and the mortality of the material. Butterflies have symbolized both transcendence and death in Hirst’s contemporary art since the early 1990s, and Suiko sits right in the middle of that tension.

The Empresses series remains one of Hirst's most coherent, most collected editioned print runs, and Suiko sits at an unusually accessible point of entry into his market. At an edition of 3,310, it's not a scarce print by Hirst's standards, but it is a genuine one: hand-signed, numbered, and produced to the same standard as his most expensive works. For a first Hirst, or a next one, it's hard to find a more considered starting point.