Gilbert & George — À propos — Slash Paris

Gilbert, born in the Italian Dolomites in 1943, and George, born in Devon, England in 1942, both art students, meet in 1967 at St Martin’s School of Art in London (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design). At the end-of-year-show, the Snow Show, Gilbert and George created their first art as a joint effort, far removed from the formalist criteria of the art taught. In 1969, they created their first “singing and living sculptures”, making themselves both subjects and objects of their works in a perfect fusion of their art and their everyday life. Gilbert & George then start to appear as “living sculptures” in museums and galleries. In 1970, during a renowned presentation, they sang and moved along Flanagan & Allen’s song Underneath the Arches for hours. The pictures dating from 1971 are the first grid-arrangements, which would henceforth become their formal signature. In 1980, their iconography becomes more complex containing endless levels of meanings from symbolic and allegorical to the most unbridled eroticism, to the religious, political and personal.

Gilbert & George have worked as one artist for over 40 years and have created more than 2000 artworks.