His work, which he liked to call ‘dirty drawings’, first found an audience on the gay underground in the 1950s and 1960s, but since then has edged ever closer to mainstream acceptance. For more than 50 years until his death in 1991, the artist better known as ‘Tom of Finland’ drew gay men in a way that was radical: his muscular young hunks were happy, playful and unashamedly sexual, without being menacing. Touko Laaksonen’s groundbreaking gay erotic art has made him a global icon.
