Touko Laaksonen  (Tom of Finland)
1920 - 1991
Finnish, Illustrator

By the time Tom was five he was playing the piano and drawing cartoons. In Helsinki he entered art school in 1939 to study advertising art. When Stalin invaded Finland he was drafted into the army and found the uniforms and the sex he loved so passionately and drew it into his art. After the war he went back to art school and also studied piano at the famed Sibelius Institute. In 1956 he was urged by a friend to send examples of his secret art work to the American magazine, "Physique Pictorial." By 1973 Tom was able to quit his very good job with an advertising agency and devote full time to his "dirty drawings" and that same year he had his first public exhibiton in Hamburg. In 1978 he went to Los Angeles where, with his close friend and greatest apostle, Durk Dehner, the "Tom of Finland Foundation" was established. He died of an emphysema induced stroke in 1991.

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