Tom of Finland invented gay imagery

TOM OF FINLAND, Untitled, 1973, Graphite on paper, 11.81” x 9.84”, © 1973-2020 Tom of Finland Foundation

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 in which not everything goes the right way but which is the beginning of a paradigm shift: the MoMA in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and MOCA in Los Angeles. In 2015 the Artist Space of New York presented the survey exhibition Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play which was then repeated in Helsinki. In 2014 Finland released three special stamps featuring Tom’s artwork.

This year Tom of Finland would be one hundred years old, and to celebrate the event, Galerie Judin in Berlin opened the Made in Berlin exhibition precisely to pay homage to Tom of Finland.

Curator Shai Ohayon has found, after two years of research, a location that will host the artist’s first exhibition on Japanese soil.

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE BY FRANCESCO TENAGLIA [IN ITALIAN]

Published: 27th September 2020

Categorised in: Article, Events