Date/Time
Date(s) - 25th Oct 2024 - 3rd Nov 2024
All Day

Location
Palm Springs Cultural Center

Categories

• Exhibitions - TOM

VENUE INFORMATION

OPENING:
25th October: 4-8p

VIEWING HOURS:
26th October: Noon-8p
27th October: Noon-8p
28th October: Noon-3p
29th October: Noon-3p
30th October: Noon-8p
31st October: Closed
1st November: Noon-3p
2nd November: Noon-8p
3rd November: Noon-3p

TOM OF FINLAND Portrait of Pekka (Cover of Sex in the Shed), 1976, Gouache on paper, 16.50” x 13.50” framed, Tom of Finland Foundation Permanent Collection © 1976 Tom of Finland Foundation

CURATED BY S.R. SHARP
TOM OF FINLAND FOUNDATION

Tom of Finland Foundation presents a special exhibition comprised of original artworks by Tom of Finland (Finnish, 1920-1991), one of the most iconic LGBTQ+ artists of the twentieth century.

Featuring works from the Foundation’s permanent collection, the exhibition includes twenty pieces that span the spectrum of the artist’s career ranging from finished drawings, gouaches, and graphite studies, to examples of his work in photography and collage.

Tom of Finland Foundation, Palm Springs 2024

Exploring the theme of desire, the exhibition is installed chronologically giving the viewer a vantage of the artist’s biography. The exhibit begins with an untitled gouache on paper work created in 1946 and includes graphite drawings of some of the iconic images created by the artist for illustrations in mid-century publications like the Athletic Model Guild that were in circulation in the 1950s and ’60s, which popularized his work among several generations of Gay men in the United States and Europe. Depicting lumberjacks, cowboys, and sailors freely reveling in their desire for one another, these drawings presented groundbreaking representations of Homosexuality in a positive, joyful way.

TOM OF FINLAND Untitled, 1964, Graphite on paper, 17.50” x 14.87” framed, Tom of Finland Foundation Permanent Collection © 1964 Tom of Finland Foundation

Although Tom of Finland’s “dirty drawings,” as he called them, were once characterized as pornographic, over the past three decades his work has become prized internationally not only for his artistic and technical mastery but for how revolutionary his affirming vision of Homosexuality stood in contrast to the era’s social and legal constraints. The exhibition culminates with works made at TOM House in Los Angeles during the last decade of his life and includes portraits of leather clad bikers, friends and lovers who populated his community here in California. 

OPENING PHOTOS BY FERNANDO GUERRERO