This year House of Illustration will open the UK’s first public solo show dedicated to gay cultural icon and prolific artist Tom of Finland (born Touko Laaksonen), in partnership with Tom of Finland Foundation and the Finnish Institute in London.

This timely exhibition, on the centenary of his birth, will celebrate the artist whose homoerotic visions had a profound effect on gay communities in Europe and North America during a pivotal period in their history and continue to have an immeasurable influence on popular culture today. Tom of Finland: Love and Liberation will display 40 works on paper produced from the 1960s to the 1980s, both before and after homosexuality was decriminalised in much of Europe and the U.S.

It will include early drawings of men fighting that constituted the only legal way to show physical contact between men before decriminalisation, as well as illustrations from his iconic Kake comics and rare linocuts produced in very limited editions.

The exhibitiion wil be on from the 6th of March until late June.

Book your ticket online

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House of Illustration will open the UK’s first public solo show dedicated to artist Tom of Finland