Recalling the artist who helped start a revolution

A new film explores the life of Tom of Finland, the man whose drawings were so instrumental in developing the gay aesthetic, writes Ellie O’Byrne.

Touko Laaksonen is not a household name. Yet under the simple moniker of Tom of Finland, Laaksonen, making his living as an advertising draughtsman in conservative post-war Finland, was secretively putting pen to paper and exported his leather-clad homoerotic fantasies to emerging gay communities all over the world.

There may not have been another artist so influential in constructing the aesthetic palette that ruled the burgeoning gay scene in San Francisco in the 1970s.