Damien Hirst retrospective: from sharks to riches – in pictures

This Tate survey spans Hirst's entire career, from his time at Goldsmith's – where he kickstarted the careers of many YBAs in 1988 with his alternative art fair Freeze – to the present day. The show will feature plenty of familiar 'big hits', such as the first pickled shark – The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) which has since been remade because it was visibly decaying Photograph: Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011.

For the Love of God, Hirst's platinum lifesize cast of a human skull (2007) covered in 8,601 diamonds will be on show in the Turbine hall for the duration of the Tate retrospective Photograph: HO/Reuters

Mother and Child Divided, which won the 1995 Turner prize, consisted of a cow and calf bisected and suspended in formaldehyde. Hirst said: 'It was about my mum and sister, who had fallen out at the time. It was a funny take on that.' The retrospective will show Hirst's version made for the Tate Turner retrospective in 2007 Photograph: Alex Lentati/Rex Features

Away From the Flock is another famous formaldehyde piece. It was famously vandalised by another artist who poured black ink into the tank Photograph: New York Daily News Archive/Getty

Hirst's pharmaceutical cabinets will be shown from their earliest incarnation: his work Sinner, a medicine cabinet he made in 1988 while studying at Goldsmith's Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates/Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011

Butterlies will form a major theme of the show. The survey will include In and Out of Love, the two-part installation not seen together since 1991. In the first part, In and Out of Love (White Paintings and Live Butterflies), a room is lined with pupae-adorned canvases. The butterflies will hatch over time and flutter around the room as visitors walk through Photograph: Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011

The second room, In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays), is filled with canvases covered in dead butterflies, as well as a table full of ashtrays and cigarettes – a metaphor for pleasure meeting death Photograph: Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011

Another butterfly-themed work: Damien Hirst's Sympathy in White Major – Absolution II 2006 (detail) Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates /Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011.

The Acquired Inability to Escape (1991), which Hirst donated to the Tate. The large glass display case contains, among other things, an ashtray, lighter and cigarettes – for Hirst, symbolic of luxury, danger and death Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

Another early work, from 1990: Damien Hirst's A Thousand Years, which consists of a glass box full of flies, maggots, a cow's head and an Insect-o-cutor Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates /Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011.

Beautiful, childish, expressive, tasteless, not art, over simplistic, throw away, kid's stuff, lacking integrity, rotating, nothing but visual candy, celebrating, sensational, inarguably beautiful painting (for over the sofa), 1996 – one of a series of circle paintings by Hirst from the mid-90s Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates /Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011.

Visitors look at Damien Hirst's The Kingdom featuring a tiger shark in formaldehyde at Sotheby's 2008 auction Beautiful Inside My Head Forever in London. The Tate retrospective will include a room dedicated to that famous auction, which raised £111m on 15 and 16 September 2008, the day before Lehmann Brothers bank collapsed Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images