Tom of Finland
Home - Secured Doormat
£90
A brush doormat featuring a Tom of Finland colour drawing from 1982, exclusive to House of Voltaire.
Dimensions
60 x 85 cm
Finishing
Eco-friendly PET carpet
Tom of Finland, 'Untitled', 1962. From the Atlantic Model Guild 'The Tattooed Sailor' series. © 1962 Tom of Finland Foundation.Courtesy the Tom of Finland Foundation
About The Artwork
Made for a Canadian friend, in ‘Home - Secured’, the breeches and boots are those of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Rendered here on doormat, the perfect place to clean your boots. Tom of Finland’s pioneering depictions of homosexual machismo in his images of bikers, soldiers, cowboys, sailors and labourers broadly represent queer, leather and muscle communities. A master draughtsman, his works gave form to an imaginative universe that, in turn, helped fuel real-world liberation movements and had a significant influence on a wide range of cultural figures, including the Village People, Freddie Mercury, Jean Paul Gaultier and Robert Mapplethorpe.
About Tom of Finland
Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen, b.1920- d.1991) has been the subject of numerous solo and two-person exhibitions, including ‘Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland’ at Studio Voltaire, as well as Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Gallery X Tokyo and Osaka, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Artists Space New York Kunsthalle Helsinki and Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. Key group exhibitions include ARoS Aarhus Art Museum Denmark, Kunsthal Charlottenborg Copenhagen, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Institute of Contemporary Art London and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation New York.
His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and SFMOMA, San Francisco.