“AllTogether” | Al Urban, Bastille and Bob Mizer

AllTogether features artists from the Tom of Finland Foundation collections. 

AL URBAN (B. 1917 D. 1992, American)
Al Urban was a physique photographer whose work appeared widely in physical culture and physique magazines of the 1940s and 1950s. He was described as one of the “pillars of the postwar golden age of gay physique culture” by scholar Thomas Waugh. Arrested and jailed in 1947 for violating the Comstock laws, Urban’s career effectively ended with his final criminal conviction in 1960, resulting in a one-year sentence and the seizure of most of his work. Much of Urban’s work was lost in police raids.

BASTILLE (B. 1929 D. 1990, American)
Bastille (born Frank Webber) studied illustration at Pratt Institute and, in 1955, moved to Paris, France, to study metal engraving. In the 1980s, he took the name Bastille because he was born on Bastille Day, 14th July, and lived near the Place de la Bastille. His artistic works are small in size and often present dark expressions of sexuality, yet they are spiritually based. In 1983 he sent his boyfriend Nigel Kent a series of love letters in envelopes he made into art, which are now part of the permanent collection of Tom of Finland Foundation. Bastille died in Dijon, France, from AIDS-related leukemia.

BOB MIZER (B. 1922 D. 1992, American)
Robert Henry Mizer was a photographer and filmmaker known for pushing the boundaries of male homoerotic content with his work in the mid-century. He is probably best known for his groundbreaking magazine Physique Pictorial: a publication that
mixed photographs and illustrations with Mizer’s vitriolic political meanderings. Mizer established the influential studio, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG), in 1945, a film and photo studio specializing in handsome natural-bodied boy-next-door talent. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2013), presented Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland, the first American institutional exhibition devoted to the two artists.

Discover more AllTogether artists

The exhibition tells the individual stories of the artists. At the same time, the exhibition locates parallels, interactions, and influences between Tom of Finland Foundation, Tom’s aesthetic impact, and the community of artists that have formed throughout the years around them…View

Published: 19th April 2022

Categorised in: Art Offering, Events