May is the month of Tom of Finland: in Venice the group exhibition of homoerotic art

May is the month of masturbation: what a bore, what a beard. In the sense that May is also the month of roses and Tom of Finland; 8th May would have been his birthday. Born in 1920, he gained international fame thirty years later thanks to his explicit illustrations of athletic and liberated homosexuals, which I also liked as a young girl. Tom preferred lumberjacks, workers, policemen with a positive, Queer identity: he did not use models for his portraits but often street kids. As a technique he often used graphite. Together with photographer Bob Mizer he founded the magazine Physique Pictorial in 1950 in the pocket format to be hidden in a jacket pocket because at that time censorship was a problem. But then again, nothing has really changed (case in point, Instagram).  But let’s not digress.

TOM OF FINLAND, “Untitled”, 1987

I mention this because in Venice and simultaneously in Paris you can see a sensational group exhibition – different in the two cities – of erotic art from Tom of Finland Foundation, located in Los Angeles. In the 1980s, the Foundation began to support many Queer and homoerotic artists, excluded from exhibitions, marginalized by families, society and in need of visibility and support. Then, in an era plagued by AIDS, Tom and his friend Durk Dehner, looked towards the future. They collected works by international illustrators who often had to work anonymously and under a pseudonym, such as Mr. Link, a teacher and musician originally from the American Midwest: before his death he donated his works to the Foundation expressing the desire not to disclose who he was.

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE BY BETTINA ZAGNOLI

Published: 26th May 2022

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