Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, was BOTD in 1920. Born in Kaarina to schoolteacher parents, he moved to Helsinki when he was 19 to study advertising, using his spare time to make erotic drawings of labourers he remembered from childhood. Conscripted into the Finnish army during World War Two, he served as an anti-aircraft officer, having sexual encounters with German soldiers stations in Finland. In 1956, he started submitting his erotic drawings to the American Physique Pictorial magazine. Breaking with the then-prevailing stereotypes of gay men as self-loathing effete queens, his work featured scenes of hyper-masculine working class men – sailors, bikers, lumberjacks, construction workers – with exaggerated musculatures, bristling moustaches and wide happy smiles. With the breakdown of censorship in the 1960s, Tom was able to publish more sexually explicit images. By the early 1970s, his popularity allowed him to become a full-time artist. His images became the blueprint for 1970s gay male culture, inspiring, among others, his friend the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Tom lived with dancer Veli Mäkinen for 28 years until the latter’s death. He then formed a relationship with Durk Dehner, a man 30 years his junior, until his own death in 1991, aged 71. His work continues to arouse debate, both praised for his positive depictions of gay male desire and criticised for promoting Fascist stereotypes of hyper-masculinity.