Tom of Finland exhibition will be seen in Sweden this summer

The success from the Turku 2011 European Capital of Culture is coming to Stockholm! Tom of Finland exhbition will be seen in Kulturhuset in Stockholm 28 June - 19 August 2012.

For 40 years, the artist Tom of Finland has been a major gay icon. His drawings have inspired the fantasies of generations of homosexual men.

They have had a huge impact on gay self-image in an era when the prevailing opinion was that homosexual men were wimps and pansies. Tom’s pictures instead portray self-confident macho men with enormous, swelling muscles, big phalluses, tight trousers and small vests. Men having fun and feeling proud. He has had a decisive influence on gay culture since he was the first to connect homosexuality with masculinity.

Touko Laaksonen was born in Kaarina outside Turku in 1920. He worked as a commercial illustrator and as a restaurant and theatre musician. In the 1950s, his drawings began to appear in publications for homosexual readers. Like so many of the illustrators and photographers in these magazines, he chose to work under a pseudonym, Tom of Finland.

In response to the rocketing demand for Tom's pictures in magazines, advertising and posters, he began taking private commissions and organising exhibitions in sex shops. In the 1970s, he moved to the USA and lived there for several years, becoming increasingly famous on the emerging gay arts scene.

Today, he is regarded as the most influential creator of gay pornographic images, and is represented in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2009, he was featured in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennial. He died in 1991.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Kulturhuset is arranging a film programme.

This exhibition is produced by Kulturhuset in association with Homotopia, Liverpool, and the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles.

Kulturhuset