Gilbert and George, British performance artists and photographers, whose defiance of established notions of art has garnered an international reputation. Gilbert Proesch (1943- ) was born in the Dolomite region of Italy, and George Passmore (1942- ) was born in Totnes, England. Following his studies at art academies in the German cities of Wolkenstein, Hallein, and Munich, Proesch moved to London, where he met Passmore in 1967 at the Saint Martin's School of Art.

Gilbert and George's early work included what they called 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 coated their flesh with powder so as to make it resemble bronze.

In the 1970s they began producing photo pieces, generally in the form of gridlike arrangements of photographs, to which they often added areas of color. The artists frequently represented themselves in these works, as in Hellish (1980, Museum of Art, Baltimore), although they also used models. During the 1980s the photo pieces became more ambitious in scale and subject matter, exploring such themes as politics, religion, and sex.