“TOM OF FINLAND Made in Germany”
12th September 2020, 11:00 am
Date/Time
Date(s) - 12th Sep 2020 - 19th Dec 2020
11:00 am - 6:00 pm
Location
Galerie Judin
Categories
UPDATE 14th DECEMBER: The gallery has had to close for the next COVID lockdown in Germany (five days before the exhibition was scheduled to end). Even still, a record breaking number were able to visit during the run. You are invited to purchase a catalogue (below) as a way to view this handsome show. INQUIRIES

TOM OF FINLAND Untitled, 1974, Graphite on paper, ©1974-2020 Tom of Finland Foundation Commissioned by Harald Tangermann and Peter Daun for Toms Saloon in Berlin
Tom’s first ever exhibition was in Hamburg in 1976 and he did many commissions for German clients. The gallery has recreated this first show and devoted a publication to these seminal years.
Through his iconic drawings, Tom of Finland almost single-handedly changed the way Gay men were perceived by society, and – maybe even more importantly – how Gay men perceived themselves. The artist, who died in 1991, would have turned 100 this year.
“Producing this book was an absolute inevitability, triggered by the research we had undertaken for what started out as a modest exhibition about Tom of Finland’s early collectors and companions. Little did we know that the wealth of information that we would gather from many of the key figures of those crucial years would enable us to rewrite the story of the birth of an artist.” -Juerg Judin and Pay Matthis Karstens⠀
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Tom of Finland: Made in Germany, edited by Juerg Judin and Pay Matthis Karstens, Milan: Skira Editore 2020. ⠀
1976, 2020 – Tom back in Germany
Rising to fame under the pseudonym Tom of Finland, Touko Laaksonen (1920—1991) is perhaps the most famous and influential Finnish artist of the 20th century. His iconic depiction of proud and life-affirming gayness provided decisive impulses for the international gay movements from the 1960s onwards. But although we instinctively associate his sensuous portrayals of self-confident… View ArticleTom of Finland in “King Kong Garçon”
Features interviews with Galerie Judin and Tom of Finland Foundation in honor of #TOMs100 and the recreation of Tom’s first solo show in 1976 that opens later this year in Berlin.
Tom of Finland | Made in Germany | Galerie Judin | 12.09.-19.12.2020
…Tom’s drawings − that had largely been regarded as mere reproduction material − began their triumphal march around the globe as works of art. If, today, we understand Tom of Finland as an artist rather than as a commercial illustrator with a penchant for pornography, then this appreciation, too, is Made in Germany.
Tom of Finland invented gay imagery
Sailors, lumberjacks, policemen, cowboys, motorcyclists. 100 years after his birth, the artist who most influenced gay culture in the twentieth century. In 1976 the unlikely happened: two fans, owners of a pornographic shop in Hamburg – the Revolt Press Bookstore – organize Tom’s first show. It is not pornography, now it is art. An exhibition… View Article
PHOTOS BY HENNING VON BERG
Published: 12th September 2020
Categorised in: Exhibitions - TOM