Tom of finland art gallery
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Tom of Finland
Finnish artist (1920–1991)
For the biographical film, see Tom of Finland (film).
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinizedhomoeroticart, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade.[2] Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
Early life
Laaksonen was born on 8 May 1920 and raised by a middle-class family in Kaarina, a town in southwestern Finland, near the city of Turku.[3] Both of his parents Suoma and Edwin Laaksonen were schoolteachers at the grammar school that served Kaarina. The family lived in the school building's attached living quarters.[4]
He went to school in Turku and in 1939, at the age of 19, he moved to Helsinki to study advertising. In his spare time h
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This Craftsman home in Echo Park has long been a bastion of erotic art thanks to the internationally celebrated artist Tom of Finland.
A native of the Finnish countryside, Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991) adopted the pseudonym “Tom of Finland” in 1957, after being credited as such in Los Angeles-based photographer Bob Mizer’s magazine Physique Pictorial. He soon became a renowned illustrator of gay erotica.
Laaksonen first came to Los Angeles in 1978 to showcase his artwork in a solo exhibition. He eventually began splitting his time evenly between Finland and Los Angeles, where Durk Dehner invited Laaksonen to use the home as a studio and residence.
In 1984, Laaksonen and Dehner spearheaded the Tom of Finland Foundation in the house to catalog Laaksonen’s work and to provide a safe space for gay and queer artists facing discrimination and misrepresentation in the public realm.
The organization continues to present erotic art in a curatorial, yet open, environment where the works can be viewed and appreciated for their artistic contributions, free from jud
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In 1939, Touko went to art school in Helsinki to study advertising. His fascination expanded to include the sexy city types he found in that cosmopolitan port - construction workers, sailors, policemen - but he never dared proposition them. It was not until Stalin invaded Finland and Tom was drafted into a lieutenant's uniform that he found nirvana in the blackouts of World War II. At last, in the streets of the pitch-black city, he began to have the sex he had dreamed of with the uniformed men he lusted after, especially once the German soldiers had arrived in their irresistible jackboots. After the war, Touko went back to studying art and also took piano classes at the famed Sibelius Institute. Peace put an end to blackout sex and uniforms became rare again, so Touko returned to his teenage practice of locking himself in his room, stripping naked, and stroking himself with one hand while the other hand created on paper what he could seldom find on the streets.
By day, he did freelance artwork - advertising, window displays, fashion design. In the evenings, he played the
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