TORONTO – We get Superman, Finland gets homoerotic art.
Finland’s postal service is honouring illustrator Touko Laaksonen, better known as ‘Tom of Finland’ in North America, with commemorative stamps featuring a pair of his drawings.
Laaksonen’s work includes images of masculine men with exaggerated parts presented either wearing tight outfits or uniforms, or no clothes at all.
“His emphatically masculine homoerotic drawings have attained iconic status in their genre,” the Finnish postal service said in a press release this week. “Tom of Finland utilized the self-irony and humour typical of subcultures.”
Out of Laaksonen’s 3,500 drawings, graphic artist Timo Berry chose two images to feature on the stamp sheet.
“The sheet portrays a sensual life force and being proud of oneself,” Berry says about the choices.
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The sheet of three stamps will be released in the fall.
Laaksonen died in 1991 at the age of 71. He is considered one of the most famous Finnish artists in the world.
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