Gilbert and George

Gilbert and George, British performance artists and photographers, whose public image as a pair of conventional gentlemen contrasted strongly with the subversive qualities of their art. Their decision to refer to all their work as “sculpture” indicated their determination to break down traditional artistic categories.

The duo consists of Gilbert Proesch, who was born in the Dolomite area of Italy on September 17, 1943, and George Passmore, born in Totnes, Great Britain, on January 8, 1942. Following his studies at art academies in Wolkenstein, Hallein, and Munich, Gilbert moved to London, where he met George in 1967 at the St Martin's School of Art. Their defiance of established notions of art gave them an international reputation, extending from the United States to China. They live in London, occupying a Georgian house in the Spitalfields area of the city, which they have filled with English Neo-Gothic and Arts and Crafts furniture and pottery.

Gilbert and George's early work included “postal sculptures” consisting of images of themselves accompanied by texts, which they sent to various recipients. They also devised performances in which they presented themselves as “living sculptures”: in Living Sculpture with Heads (1969-1970) they even coated their flesh with powder so as to make it look like bronze. From the 1970s they produced “photo-pieces”, generally in the form of grid-like arrangements of photographs, to which they often added areas of colour. The artists frequently represented themselves in these works, as in Hellish (1980, Museum of Art, Baltimore), although they also used models. During the 1980s their “photo-pieces” became still more ambitious in both their scale and subject-matter, exploring such themes as politics, religion, and sex.

In their attempt to break down the boundaries between art and everyday life, Gilbert and George belong to a well-established tendency in modern art. However, their imagery and distinctive joint persona have given them a unique role in the art of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. A major retrospective of their work was held at Tate Modern, London, in 2007.