Ancient gay paintings

It is important to understand historical context when viewing these works, and the changing laws and views on homosexuality around the world. Blood red canvas with a heart half-painted, half-scratched into red ground. The word 'QUEER' is scrawled across the heart in a thick impasto style, flecks and smudges of baby blue and white paint are visible across the graffitied text as the undercoat is exposed by the scratched marks.

Male Homosexuality in Western Art

Depictions of Homoeroticism and Homosexuality in Art between the 16th - 20th centuries

Showcasing the modern lives of young men in Florence the painting includes very chalant suggestive gestures and fashion of the time. The flirtatious gestures between the two men in the midst of the scene are representative of the same-sex relations portrayal by the artist.

That the sketch is black-edged, however, feels prescient. The AIDS crisis of the s soon returned fear and pain to a new generation of queer men. Bloomsbury artist and Charleston-resident Duncan Grant spent much of his life painting the male nude. Apparently sleeping, Roche provocatively arches his back, protrudes his powerful chest and parts his legs wide like the dying Adonis.