Damien Hirst will return to the public consciousness in a big way next year when a major retrospective of his work comes to the Tate Modern on London's south bank.

Among the pieces on show will be his Mother and Child Divided bisection of a cow and calf, and the famous 1991 shark in formaldehyde, formally known as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Commissioned by Charles Saatchi for £500,000, it sold in 2004 for £5m.

Saatchi first saw the investment potential in Hirst when viewing the artist's A Thousand Years, a glass case inside which maggots and flies fed off a rotting cows head. It goes to show that art doesn't have to be pretty to be a good investment.

A portion of the exhibition will be devoted to the Sotheby's auction of Hirst's work in September 2008. 218 pieces of Hirst's work were sold at the Beautiful Inside My Head Forever event, achieving a combined £111m.

The £5m fish that started it all

Alan Montgomery, senior specialist on contemporary art at Bonhams, told the Times that the exhibition could be good news for investors. "I'm sure collectors will be falling over themselves to lend works," he said. "It definitely makes the work more valuable."

Bristol born Hirst is a former student of south London's Goldsmiths College, which has produced highly collectible Turner Prize winners Steve McQueen, Gillian Wearing, Anthony Gormley and Grenville Davey.

The exhibition will include more than 70 works and opens on April 5 2012.