BIOGRAPHICAL CATALOG OF THE MODEM'S COVERS AUTHORS

CONTEMPORARY ARTIST 45 Modem Men’s Paris Milano Spring-Summer 1999 Cover by GILBERT & GEORGE 1998 Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore are better known as the collaborative art duo Gilbert & George. They are recognizable by their the distinctive and highly formal appearance in performance art and brightly coloured graphic-style photo- based artworks. Gilbert Prousch, born 1943 in Northern Italy, studied art at the Sëlva School of Art in Val Gardena and Hallein School of Art in Austria and the Akademie der Kunst, Munich, before moving to England where he studied art at the Dartington College of Arts and the Oxford School of Art. George Passmore (born in 1942 in UK) first met in 1967 while studying sculpture at Saint Martin’s School of Art. The base of their work was created in, and focused on, London’s East End, which they see as a microuniverse. The duo adopted the slogan “Art for All” because of their anti-elitist approach to the art. Between 1970 and 1974 they realized drawings, named “Charcoal on Paper Sculptures”, and paintings to give a more powerful vision of their identity as ‘living sculptures’. By creating “ The Singing Sculpture ” in 1970, performed in Nigel Greenwood Gallery, Gilbert & George made their unique suits which became sort of a uniform for them. Their work often gets the media attention because of the inclusion of shocking imagery and titles: Naked Shit Pictures (1994) and Sonofagod Pictures (2005). The Complete Pictures , 1971–2005, a book, published in 2007 by Tate Modern, includes over a thousand examples of their art. In 2007, BBC has made the documentary “Imagine”, where the art duo has the leading role. After showing at White Cubes Hoxton and Mason Yard galleries in 2009 the exhibition travelled to contemporary gal- leries in different countries in Europe: Croatia, Netherlands, Spain and France.