Tom of Finland: Made in Germany

A spectacular book showing life and work of the Finnish icon from an unknown perspective with around 150 illustrations and well researched texts. Under the pseudonym Tom of Finland, Touko Laaksonen became arguably the most famous and influential Finnish artist of the 20th century. His iconic portrayal of self-confident and life-affirming gayness gave decisive impulses to the international gay movements from the 1960s onwards. But although we clearly associate his portrayals of sensual und powerful cowboys, farm helps, policemen and leathermen with the USA, Tom of Finland’s rise to become a gay icon received the decisive impetus neither in his native Finland nor in the USA, his later adopted country. It was, of all places, the city of Hamburg and Tom’s friendship with key exponents of the local gay scene in the early 1970s that helped him to his first exhibition ever and a series of seminal publications. He created a grand mural for the legendary “Toms Bar”, until today the only one legitimately named after him. Regular commissions to design posters and ads for gay events in Hamburg allowed him to finally quit his day job as advertising executive, and led to the creation of the most extensive private collection of his drawings to date. So it is fair to say that Tom of Finland was actually “Made in Germany”! Galerie Judin is now devoting an exhibition and a comprehensive publication to these seminal, but thus far little researched years, the art they generated and the friendships they formed. The book includes texts by Juerg Judin, Pay Matthis Karstens, Kati Mustola, Alice Delage.