Young British Artists (YBAs)

A group primarily active during the 1990s, although the label—which derives from a series of exhibitions mounted in the mid 1990s at London’s Saatchi Gallery—is still applied to some of its major members, such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and Jake and Dinos Chapman. Most were educated at the Goldsmiths school of the University of London and introduced in the 1988 Damien Hirst–curated exhibition “Freeze.” The YBAs drew stylistically from Minimalism and Conceptualism and often focused on the darker aspects of contemporary life.