“AllTogether”, queer art arrives in Venice and Paris in two exhibitions curated by the Tom of Finland Foundation

28th April 2022, 6:00 am

 

drawing of a woman removing her shirt

TANK Carla, c. 1990

Two parallel exhibitions with more than eighty works each, from around the world and owned by the foundation are exhibited for the first time outside Los Angeles.

Forbidden, opposed, censored: Queer art, celebrating the rights of LGBTQ people to love and have sex with joy and, in spite of bourgeois respectability and moralism, without guilt, has never had an easy life. In the 1950s, Bob Mizer of the Athletic Model Guild was jailed for sending homoerotic works by mail; Slava Mogutin was kicked out of Russia for inciting homosexual love in his art and prose; photographer Al Urban saw much of his works confiscated and destroyed by police.

A courageous, irreverent, joyful and sexy art, which now a group exhibition inaugurated on 22nd April in Venice at the premises of Studio Cannaregio, entitled AllTogether, curated by Tom of Finland Foundation and The Community, sponsored by Diesel, celebrates with about 160 queer works of art from all over the world. A unique opportunity, in particular, to admire the works belonging to the permanent collection of Tom of Finland Foundation, presented to the public for the first time outside Los Angeles.

man in leather cap and shirtless man

SILVIA PRADA Untitled (#7 from Tom), 2017

“A few months ago the founders of The Community, a collectively run multidisciplinary nonprofit art institution, founded in 2016 in Paris, came to visit the Foundation, and expressed a desire to see its works exhibited in Europe. Thus was born the idea of two parallel exhibitions, one in Venice and one in Paris, co-curated together,” says Durk Dehner, co-founder together with Tom of Finland of the Foundation and today its president. As a pendant to the Venetian exhibition, on May 8 – Tom’s birth day (the artist died in 1991) – a second and different exhibition will be inaugurated in Paris, also open until June 26, with a different selection of works from the Foundation.

AllTogether Venice exhibition installation view

TOM OF FINLAND Untitled (preparatory), 1989 | GEORGE QUAINTANCE Preludio, c. 1950

To enrich the rich path of both exhibitions, in addition to the famous erotic drawings of Tom of Finland, with his unmistakable men with oversized muscles and manly members, numerous works by queer artists from the 1940s to the present day. A natural choice for a non-profit that, for over thirty years, has put together, thanks to private donations, the largest collection of LGBTQ+ art in the world.

“Tom and I co-founded the Tom of Finland Foundation in 1984 in order to better preserve and promote his work. With the onset of the AIDS epidemic, the Foundation quickly made its mission its mission to promote and archive the work of other queer artists as well,” says Dehner.

painting of reclining man

DON BACHARDY Mark Klecher, January 1-1987

“Many queer artists of the time, many of whom were forced to work under anonymity throughout their careers, were concerned that their works might be forgotten or destroyed after their death. That’s why they decided to donate their lifelong work to Tom of Finland Foundation, knowing it would be carefully archived, thus preserving their stories.”

“The choice of the AllTogether title stems from the decision to emphasize the fact that these two exhibitions are a family affair: a celebration of the extended family, made up of LGBTQ+ artists and creatives, that orbited Tom, at various stages of his life. An unconventional family, but no less than a family,” he explains.

“A contemporary French photographer, Rachel Laurent, told me during a visit to a past exhibition in Paris: ‘here you can admire the work of a man, who has not put strains at his heart.’ A symbol of freedom for everyone, not just the queer community. Sexuality is an integral part of our person: no one, for any reason in the world, should ever be ashamed of it.”

VOGUE Italia

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AllTogether

About the Exhibition Artists Venice Paris Catalogue Press About the Exhibition On the occasion of Tom of Finland’s birthday (8th May), Tom of Finland Foundation and The Community have curated a group exhibition, supported by Diesel, presenting Tom of Finland Foundation’s permanent collection. AllTogether explores the erotic art collection consisting of thousands of artworks, spanning… View Article
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Published: 28th April 2022

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