Tom of Finland’s libidinally charged illustrations of muscled-up men in various states of embrace – and often clad in skin-tight leather or denim – have seen the Finnish artist (born Touko Laaksonen), become one of queer art’s most distinctive voices. First appearing in publications like Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial in the 1950s, his stylised drawings would – as his eponymous Los Angeles-based foundation describes – ‘fuel both the sexual fantasies and the aesthetics of gay men'.
Glenn Martens, the Belgian creative director of Italian fashion label Diesel, has forged a deep-rooted relationship with the Tom of Finland Foundation and its president Durk Dehner, a friend and lover of Laaksonen, who set up the foundation with him in 1984 (the artist would die in 1991, with Dehner becoming the guardian of his legacy). ‘[His work] seemed to affect me in a way that art never had before, an emotional way,’ Dehner told Wallpaper* on the occasion of Diesel’s ‘AllTogether’ exhibition in Venice in 2022, which combined Tom of Finland’s illustrations with the work of other erotic artists. ‘There was something in it that made it feel like he had done these pictures for us, for gay boys. That was important in a world where nothing felt like it was made for you,’ he said.
