The First Homosexuals

Of course, there was same-sex desire long before the term “homosexual” was first coined in 1869. Representations of sexual difference from various regions are presented here, from a time before homosexuality was even named. In the early modern era, roughly from 1500 to 1800, a negative attitude toward same-sex love prevailed in Europe. Yet representations of homoeroticism nonetheless found their way into art of the period. Particularly influential in this regard was neoclassicism at the end of the 18th century, which drew on Greco-Roman antiquity and its ideals of the human form. Under the cloak of classical mythology, artists were able to explore homoerotic motifs without having to name them explicitly. Same-sex relations were socially accepted in many places outside of Europe. As early as the 17th century, erotic images called shunga (spring pictures) proliferated in Japan, depicting both homosexual and heterosexual love scenes, occasionally in the same image. However, this official openness ended with the Meiji Restoration from 1868: in the course of political transformation and imperial ambitions, depictions of homosexual relationships were increasingly repressed. Similarly to Japan before the Meiji era, Lima, the capital of Peru, was considered particularly tolerant in the 19th century. Especially after independence from Spain in 1826, gender and sexual diversity was more openly expressed.

Upon their arrival in Central and South America in the early 16th century, European occupiers encountered Indigenous societies whose concepts of gender and sexuality differed from Christian-European ideals. Relationships between persons of the same gender were criminalized by the colonizers as “sodomy” and morally condemned. Many previously accepted ways of life were erased. In the 16th and 17th centuries, this repression was particularly severe. After the Latin American Wars of Independence, which lasted until 1826, social control loosened in some cities. Lima began to develop a reputation for greater openness toward diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. In Hombres vestidos de mujer (Men Dressed as Women), Peruvian painter Francisco Fierro (1807–1879) portrays two figures whose attire reflects this reputation. They are not placed in a festive or theatrical setting, where gender roles might be temporarily reversed. Instead, Fierro shows an everyday scene in which their gender expression appears as part of ordinary life. This is echoed in the depiction of Juan José Cabezudo (ca. 1800–1860), attributed to Francisco Javier Cortés (ca. 1770–1841). Cabezudo was a celebrated Afro-Peruvian figure who openly lived a genderqueer existence and often wore women’s clothing. This stood not in the way of Cabezudo’s social standing: when Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), the South American independence fighter and later dictator, left Peru to continue his military campaign, Cabezudo organized the official state dinner. Together, these works underscore that there is no universal progression toward acceptance, but rather a complex, globally uneven negotiation over how gender and sexuality are understood and judged.

How did the “first” homosexual individuals in the 19th and early 20th centuries depict themselves? How did they portray their friends and lovers, and which networks were made visible? With the establishment of the term “homosexuality,” a new identity was formed. From perhaps the earliest known European depiction of a male couple by the French painter Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929) in 1879 to that of her queer multigenerational family by the Danish artist Emilie Mundt (1842–1922) in 1893, a new self-understanding unfolded. Homosexuality is no longer understood solely as a sexual act or private preference, but rather as part of one’s identity. Simultaneously, a collective visual language developed: homosexuality became recognizable. In works from the late 19th century, same-sex desire often only becomes apparent on a second glance—for example, through the gaze, gestures, clothing, or body language. These compositions rely on allusions and require careful observation as well as prior knowledge of the references. In the early 20th century, by contrast, the American-French painter Romaine Brooks (1874–1970) already depicted queer self- presentations explicitly rather than merely hinting at them: the portrait of her lover, the dazzling Italian noblewoman Luisa Casati (1881–1957), reveals this new self-confidence—a distinctly androgynous body, bright red hair, unabashedly nude, and a gaze that captivates the viewer.

Well-known in his day, the French portrait painter and author Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942) inhabits the long tradition of the self-portrait in the studio—palette and brush in hand. The formal composition recalls a work by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael (1483–1520), the so-called self-portrait with a friend. Like Raphael, Blanche places the second figure slightly offcenter, his hand resting on the other man’s shoulder in an intimate gesture. Blanche’s work exemplifies how French painting in the late 19th century made same-sex relationships increasingly visible. His art and life span a far-reaching network between London and Paris. Blanche portrayed numerous influential homosexual figures of his time, like Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) and Marcel Proust (1871–1922), and was friends with Robert de Montesquiou (1855–1921), Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). The man next to Blanche was likely Raphael de Ochoa (1858–1935), his presumed partner. Blanche himself wrote that they shared the same tastes. By staging their closeness so plainly, he renders the partnership legible on canvas, framing the bond as a formative force.

Although homosexuality was not illegal in 19th-century France, public expressions of—mostly male—same-sex desire were still prosecuted under the charge of outrage public à la pudeur (public indecency). Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929), known as Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, nonetheless depicted two men, arms interlinked, out for a stroll in his drawing La Blanchisseuse (The Laundress). They are presumed to be the painters Carl Ernst von Stetten (1857–1942) and Gustave Courtois (1852–1923), friends of the artist. Their correspondence with Dagnan- Bouveret did not explicitly address their homosexuality, but it describes a shared life and a deep romantic attachment. This work is among the earliest known depictions of a reallife same-sex couple. Yet it is not the men’s interlinked arms that make this work distinctive. It is the other social cues that the image offers, most clearly in the figure of the seated laundress, who directly addresses the viewer and gives the work its title. At the time, laundresses were often also sex workers, another context in which bodies were policed in public space. In this case, her disappointed expression, so pointedly shared with us, that she understands that neither of these men will be her clients. Although the term “homosexuality” had been in circulation for about ten years, the concept was not yet fully anchored in society by 1879. Still, the laundress’s reaction implies that the understanding of same-sex desire as an innate, personal, and unchangeable quality was already widespread.

With a penetrating gaze, the Swiss painter Ottilie W. Roederstein (1859–1937) looks directly at her viewer in this self-portrait. Her turned posture, the strong contrasts, the dramatic lighting, and intimate scale recall works in European portraiture from the 15th to the 17th centuries. The signature at the top of the image, “O. W. Roederstein peinte par elle même 1894” (O. W. Roederstein painted by herself) — reinforces this claim, as does her attire. The red cap refers to Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606–1669) famous self-portrait from 1660, while the beret was also commonly worn by artists of her own time. By adopting this visual language, Roederstein asserts her identity as a professional artist rather than conforming to prevailing women’s fashion. This work, which is today part of the Kunstmuseum Basel collection, was first presented at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1894. It is considered to be Roederstein’s first publicly exhibited self-portrait. Today, over 80 additional self-portraits are known. The repeated return to her own image reflects an intense exploration of artistic identity at a moment when women’s professional visibility was still contested. Despite structural obstacles, Roederstein and her partner Elisabeth H. Winterhalter (1856–1952) established themselves with remarkable independence: Roederstein was among the most successful artists in Switzerland, while Winterhalter was the first female surgeon in Germany. They lived together as a couple, shared a household and were financially independent—an arrangement that defied the social conventions of their time.

Around 1900, a change occurred in the depiction of male bodies in homoerotic art. At the end of the 19th century, slim, youthful bodies were still central; however, by the early 20th century, muscular, decidedly more masculine bodies moved to the foreground. During this time there was also a change in European ideals of the body. Various movements promoted the health and strength of the male body, whether in service to the nation, to increase performance in early capitalism, or to build strength in class struggle. While they focused on a naturally athletic body, the homoerotic works of the time centered the artificiality of the bodybuilder. This reflects a changing understanding of homosexuality itself. At the time, homosexuality was not considered a sexual orientation, but was conceived as a “third sex.” The prevailing theory held that homosexuals were born into the body of one sex but with a “soul” of the opposite gender. According to this understanding, homosexual people were inherently a “third sex,” and the adolescent body became its privileged figure, as adolescents were thought to embody physical aspects of both sexes. But as the word “homosexual” increasingly came to define same-sex relations, normative gender identities became increasingly valued. Thus, pictorial representations also changed and male bodies were depicted as more mature and emphatically more masculine. This change is less evident in female artists’s depictions of women’s bodies: there is no comparable shift toward more traditionally feminine forms. Instead, here too, there is a growing interest in muscular bodies.

The Peruvian painter Carlos Baca-Flor (1867–1941) was shaped by the Parisian Académie Julian, where he learned, among other things, academic figure drawing. In his work, he often makes cultural references to his homeland, Peru. However, Baca-Flor’s positioning between Lima and Paris was not only artistic: he belonged to a privileged group of people with European or European-Indigenous heritage who perceived themselves as “Neo- Europeans.” Although they positioned themselves in relation to Europe, they also possessed a strong sense of national identity. Baca-Flor’s depictions of young bodies in Abel muerto (Dead Abel) as well as in Estudio de joven (Study of a Youth) stand within a 19th-century tradition in which youth was idealized in homoerotic artworks. In Estudio de joven, Baca-Flor depicts a young man who appears in a mirror. Mirrors are often used in art to explore the relationships between viewers, artists, and subjects. Here, observers can witness an intimate scene without being noticed by the depicted figure. The subject becomes an object of desire. The youth in the mirror also refers to the ancient myth of Narcissus, who falls in love with his own reflection. Before the term “homosexuality” was coined, Narcissus was already often used as a reference to same-sex relationships. The loving gaze in Baca-Flor’s study is not directed toward one’s own image, but toward the young man himself—through the eyes of the viewer.

Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980) was born in Warsaw and belonged to the upper class of St. Petersburg. After the October Revolution of 1917, she fled to Paris with her husband, the lawyer Tadeusz Łempicki (1889–1950). In 1928, she divorced and later married Baron Raoul Kuffner (1886–1961). She freely had relationships with both men and women. Her work often drew upon motifs from European art before 1800. However, she was above all known for her confident, erotically charged depictions of women. In her works, she broke down pictorial elements into cubist-like, geometric segments. She rendered figures in a sculptural and highly stylized manner. In doing so, de Lempicka helped shape Art Deco painting. This movement in architecture, design, and art flourished in the USA and Europe between 1919 and 1939. In Nu assis de profil (Seated Nude in Profile), the body fills nearly the entire picture plane. The woman’s deeply tanned face and forearms indicate her social status as a laborer and her emphatically muscular appearance contradicts the prevailing female beauty ideals of the time. The work was created during a period in which gender roles were being renegotiated. This influenced both de Lempicka’s work and the Parisian cultural scene, in which the figure of the Garçonne was becoming increasingly significant: she embodied modernity, was often lesbian, wore short hair, male-connoted clothing, and frequently had an athletic body. Artists often used the Garçonne as a reference to female homosexuality, as can be seen in the work of Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968) in the section Speaking in Code.

According to his diaries, the author, art collector, and patron Harry von Kessler (1868–1937) was fascinated by the physical appearance of his lover Gaston George Colin (1891–1957). Colin, a racing cyclist and jockey, embodied the slim, athletic physique that corresponded to the homoerotic ideals of his time. During a joint trip to Greece with the French artist Aristide Maillol (1861–1944), Kessler expressed the wish for a life-size marble statue of Colin. Other sources report that he wanted a bronze modeled after the young Narcissus. While Maillol devoted many hours to the commission, Kessler documented the work’s creation through photographs and written notes. With his downcast gaze and weight shifted onto one leg, the sculpture recalls ancient depictions of the mythological god Apollo. For Kessler, ancient Greece served as a model because sexual relations between men and male youths were socially anchored and widely accepted. Against the backdrop of the repression of homosexuality in the 19th century, the naturalness of same-sex desire in antiquity appeared to many as an ideal. During the trip, Maillol allowed himself to be guided by his patron’s aesthetic preferences. In Le coureur cycliste (Racing Cyclist) he stages the male body as a classical ideal of beauty and strength.

The sculptor and painter Laura Rodig (1896/1901–1972) was socially and politically engaged as a feminist and moved in likeminded circles in Chile, France, Mexico, and Spain. Associated with the feminist writer Marta Vergara (1898–1995), she led a long romantic relationship with Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957), one of Latin America’s most celebrated poets and a Nobel Prize-winning writer. Rodig was active within Chile’s Communist party and, from 1935 onward, fought as a member of the MEMCh (Pro-Emancipation Movement of Chilean Women) for women’s right to vote and social equality. Rodig’s convictions shaped her as an artist and teacher and found their way into her creative and poetic work. Rodig’s art developed a new homoerotic body ideal that subverted conventional associations with femininity and masculine clichés. In Desnudo de mujer (Female Nude), she portrays a muscular, assertive woman with a clenched fist and a steady, direct gaze. In the background, two standing figures can be seen in a barren landscape under a blue sky, a motif that also appears in another work by Rodig. In both works, the figures elude clear gender classification. Through her choice of pose and the appearance of the bodies, Rodig creates a counter-image to normative gender definitions in early 20th-century Chile.

Same-sex desire was criminalized and persecuted in many societies—and continues to be today. This made it necessary to develop coded signs and clues that might only be understood by like-minded individuals. Established visual traditions were often used for this purpose: motifs from mythology, religion, and art history opened interpretive spaces in which homoerotic themes could be negotiated. In his painting of two fishermen and a group of onlookers Nackte Fischer und Knaben am grünen Gestade, German painter Ludwig von Hofmann (1861–1945) draws upon the motif of bathers. His work only suggests homoerotic desire: it doesn’t reveal anything explicit, and the figures have little physical contact. About 30 years later, the Swiss painter and architect Paul Camenisch (1893–1970) took a much more unabashed approach to the same motif in his own version of the
bathers, Badende in der Breggiaschlucht.

Female homosexuality was connected with friendship early on. This is evident in literature, titles of works, and the historic descriptions of relationships between women, such as the 18th-century term “romantic friendship” or popular 19th-century expression “sentimental friends.” Works from the early 20th century, on the other hand, show that the concept of friendship during this period fulfilled a double function: it served both to conceal homosexuality and to hint at it. Depictions of so-called friends, at times explicitly erotic, show that the intimacy of such relationships was by no means always a secret.

Contre-jour (Backlight) by the Swiss artist Marie-Louise-Catherine Breslau (1856–1927) offers insight into the everyday lives of women in 19th-century France. The painting depicts Breslau and her partner, the French artist Madeleine Zillhardt (1863–1950), in their shared home. At the time, private interiors were a common subject for women artists in Europe, as women’s lives were often confined to the domestic sphere. In France, married women were not permitted to pursue a career without their husbands’s consent until as late as 1965. Wealthy married women were expected to devote themselves entirely to the roles of wife and mother. Unmarried women such as Breslau, on the other hand, could—if their social status allowed—lead comparatively self-determined lives. Breslau was among the first women who were able to study at art academies such as the Académie Julian in Paris thanks to relaxed admission policies. In Contre-jour, due to the backlighting, both women are bathed in shadow. Breslau sits elevated and gazes directly at the viewer. While presenting a familiar image of warm domesticity, Zillhardt simultaneously casts a dreamy, almost wistful gaze upon Breslau. The violets on the side table offer another hint at their relationship: in the 19th century, violets were considered a symbol of female homosexuality, following the poet Sappho (ca. 630–570 BC), who mentioned them in her poetry. To this day, Sappho remains the epitome of desire between women: her name gave rise to the term “sapphic,” and her place of origin, Lesbos, to “lesbian.”

An initial interpretation of Swiss artist Paul Camenisch’s (1893–1970) Schweizer Narziss (Swiss Narcissus) suggests that the artist has transposed the ancient myth of Narcissus into a contemporary bathroom setting. Like the mythological figure, this Narcissus also directs his gaze exclusively at himself. He turns his back on the atrocities of the Second World War, which appear depicted on the surrounding tiles. In doing so, Camenisch criticizes Switzerland’s indifference during the war years, which was primarily concerned with its own affairs—self-absorbed, like Narcissus. But the work also allows for another reading. Long before the term “homosexual” entered common usage, same-sex love was associated with the myth of Narcissus. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) also connected homosexual desire with narcissism. Seen through this lens, Camenisch’s painting functions as a double mirror: it not only reflects Switzerland’s self-centered attitude but also the precarious position of homosexuals amid the rise of fascism in Europe. Despite the comparatively liberal legal situation in Basel from 1919 and throughout Switzerland from 1942, the situation for homosexual people remained tense. The registering and monitoring of homosexuals by police would have facilitated Nazi persecution in the event of an occupation of Switzerland. The social situation contributed to the suppression of homosexuality into secrecy. This forced retreat into private space can also be discerned in Camenisch’s Schweizer Narziss.

Internationally recognized in her time, the Swedish sculptor Ida Matton (1863–1940) spent most of her adult life in Paris, then the center of the international art world. In late 19th-century France, lesbians often experienced the discrimination against women even more acutely than the hostility directed towards homosexuals. Because women were largely excluded from the renowned École des Beaux-Arts in the 19th century, Matton attended the private art academies Académie Colarossi and Académie Julian, institutions that offered students of all genders access to professional training, including life-drawing classes. Even within this context, sculpture remained an exclusionary field. Long associated with physical strength and large-scale public commissions, sculpture was widely considered a “masculine domain.” Despite these obstacles, Matton forged her own path in life and defied gender roles. The double bust from 1902 exhibited here was displayed and awarded a prize at the L’Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs (Union of Women Painters and Sculptors) in Paris. La Confidence (The Secret) is widely understood as a deeply personal work. Matton may be referring to her long-term partner, the Australian opera singer Elyda Russell (1872–1949): the left figure resembles Matton herself, while the right is thought to depict Russell. The physical intimacy, unclothed bodies almost merging into a single form, and the gesture of whispering suggest a bond of trust and tenderness. What Matton is whispering to Russel remains unknown.

The history of homosexuality is closely related to ideas about gender. Early explanations saw same-sex desire as the result of an inverted “soul”—for example, a “female soul” in the body of a man. Around 40 years after the term “homosexual” was first mentioned in print in 1869, the first terms for trans people appeared—that is, for people whose gender identity does not correspond to the sex assigned to them at birth. During this period, new ways of naming and understanding identity emerged. Sexuality and gender increasingly came to be understood as separate concepts. With the rise of German National Socialism and the outbreak of the Second World War, these developments came to an abrupt in Europe. The period was devastating for queer people in general, and thus also for many of the artists represented in this exhibition. Magnus Hirschfeld’s (1868–1935) groundbreaking Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) in Berlin was destroyed in 1933 as part of the book burning campaign of the “Action Against the Un-German Spirit.” Toyen (1902–1980), a member of the Czech and French surrealist movements, was forced to go underground during the occupation of Prague; while Estonian artist Karl Pärsimägi (1902–1942) was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. The French artist couple Claude Cahun (1894–1954) and Marcel Moore (1892–1972) was active in the resistance on the occupied British Channel Island of Jersey. Yet this history does not end with persecution or silence. As shown in a late self-portrait of the German artist Toni Ebel (1881–1961)—a survivor from Hirschfeld’s milieu—the artistic exploration of homosexuality and trans identities persisted despite repression, and did not end in 1939 with the beginning of the Second World War.

Claude Cahun (1894–1954) was an author and artist. She grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Nantes, France, where she had already met her future stepsister Marcel Moore (1892–1972) when they were teenagers. Moore remained her life-long partner, and they collaborated until Cahun’s death. Together, they moved to Paris, where they adopted the masculine-sounding names Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Cahun described her own gender identity as fluid and neutral, and from a contemporary perspective is often considered non-binary, neither female nor male. Cahun and Moore affiliated with the group of artists and writers known as the Surrealists, who placed dreamlike, irrational, and subconscious imagery at the center of their art. They participated in their group exhibitions and various political activities. Cahun was versatile, using whatever artistic medium suited the project at hand: in books like Aveux non avenus (Disavowals or Cancelled Confessions) from 1930, she brought together autobiographical fragments, image collages, and poems into a polyphonic composition in close collaboration with Moore. At the same time, Cahun worked for the stage and theater. The poet and artist Pierre Albert-Birot’s (1876–1967) experimental “anti- theater” offered her a laboratory for masquerade and role-playing. Today, Cahun is primarily known for a series of photographic performances in which she playfully explores her own (gender) identity, staged and photographed by Moore. Due to the rise of German fascism, Cahun and Moore moved to the British Channel Island of Jersey in 1937. After the Germans occupied Jersey in 1940, the two carried out various acts of resistance under the pseudonym Der Soldat ohne Namen (The soldier with no name). In 1944, both were arrested and sentenced to death, but were saved from execution by the end of the war.

In the painting Lili and Gerda on the terrace (Portrait of Lili and Gerda in Anacapri) by Danish artist Lili Elbe (1882–1931), the view opens onto the Italian Mediterranean island of Capri. Two people engaged in lively conversation are situated at the bottom right edge of the image, while the landscape takes up most of the composition. Due to their greater tolerance of homosexuality, Capri and southern Sicily were popular destinations for those whose desires conflicted with prevailing moral codes towards the end of the 19th century. Capri in particular became a place of longing and refuge—a place between lived freedom and romanticized ideas. While Elbe still signed the work under her former name, there is already a glimpse of the future she desires: the work depicts her living confidently as a trans woman, together with her wife at the time, the artist Gerda Wegener, née Gottlieb (1886–1940). The canvas makes it possible to envision a self-determined life, independent of legal circumstances, medical possibilities, or social values. One year after the painting was created, Elbe became one of the first known people to undergo gender-affirming surgeries. Her legal recognition as female was established, and her marriage to Gerda Wegener was consequently annulled. Same-sex marriages were not legal at that time. She changed her name to Lili Ilse Elvenes and was later known as Lili Elbe. Elbe died in 1931, presumably as a result of complications following her fourth operation in Dresden.

The German-Baltic artist and writer Elisàr von Kupffer (1872–1942), known as Elisarion, devised a unique cosmos uniting art and philosophy. In Minusio near Locarno, he and his partner, the historian and philosopher Eduard von Mayer (1873–1960), founded the religion of Clarism in 1926 and began building the temple-like Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion that same year. It was filled with Elisarion’s image worlds, which link the cultures of Western and Central Asian countries with references to Greco-Roman antiquity and occult teachings. According to Elisarion’s belief system, humans become truly complete when they transcend the separation between male and female, thus attaining the ideal of androgyny. He rejected the concept of homosexuality as it presupposes a binary division of gender that he fundamentally opposed. Nevertheless, Elisarion’s works visually stand in the tradition of late 19th-century homoerotic art, particularly in their idealized depictions of male youth. Elisarion’s investment in self-mythologization and belief in an elevated ideal was not without political affinity: during the era of German National Socialism, he was enthusiastic about Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and wrote him admiring letters. Elisarion’s strict rejection of any distinction between men and women and his attempt to create a universal gender align disturbingly well with an authoritarian logic that privileges sameness over difference. Rather than allowing for variation, Elisarion envisioned one model of human completeness for all. This is echoed visually: the figures in his supposedly utopian imagery appear strikingly uniform in form, gesture, and expression.

Pavel Tchelitchew (1898–1957), born in the Russian Empire, worked as a painter as well as a stage and costume designer. After living in various cities, including Berlin and Paris, he settled in New York in 1936. There he moved in artistic and intellectual circles that included figures such as the writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), the photographer George Platt Lynes (1907–1955), and Tchelitchew’s patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996), who was the co-founder of the New York City Ballet. In this environment, homosexuality and open forms of relationships were a lived reality. From 1925 onwards, Tchelitchew experimented with methods of depicting multiple perspectives of a person simultaneously. Kirstein described this multiplication as the “mania of triplicity.” The painting exhibited, Untitled (Seated Man, Multiple Images), belongs to a group of what the artist called his “multiple images.” The almost photographic superimposition of different views of the same motif sets the figure in motion and presents identity as mutable. This might be understood as reflecting the reality of queer people who have long been compelled to present themselves as one person in public and another in private. The selection of photographs shows that artists at the time experimented with the photographic medium to represent multi-layered identities by using doubling, superimposition, and mirroring. And because photographs were usually small and often taken in private settings, this medium made it possible to capture representations of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Czech Toyen (1902–1980) was a key figure in Czech and French Surrealism. This international art movement emerged around 1920 in Paris and regarded art as a medium for expanding human consciousness and freeing it from rational, bourgeois views. As a consequence, although the Surrealists were often quite explicitly homophobic, queer artists nonetheless took a particular interest in the movement, both because of its refusal of conventions and because it made such social dissidence seductive. Like the Paris Surrealists, their Czech counterparts were interested in Sigmund Freud’s (1856–1939) psychoanalysis—particularly his theories of desire, manifest in dreams and the unconscious, as tools for exploring consciousness. The person behind the gender-neutral pseudonym “Toyen” kept their gender identity and sexual orientation concealed and burned all personal documents. Toyen preferred clothing and pronouns that were read as masculine. Due to this rather masculine self-staging, there has been speculation that Toyen was a trans man or non-binary. Rendered in only a few lines, the watercolor exhibited in Untitled (Portrait with Nude) shows an androgynous face with a slim mustache overlaid with an eroticized rear view of a headless, female-seeming body. The face’s visible eye focuses on the partially clothed form. The superimposition of the fragmented body with the upper part of the face renders it visible as a desired apparition of the (un)conscious.

As European countries expanded their colonial reach, their values and legal concepts became established in many parts of the world, promoting deliberate hostility towards same-sex desire and alternative conceptions of gender in regions where these had long been taken for granted, such as North, Central, and South America. Theodor de Bry’s (1528–1598) depiction of the massacre of “third gender” Indigenous people by the Spaniard Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475–1519) in Panama around 1513 is a striking example of this. Hostility towards homosexuality was also used as a political tool. In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire in particular was depicted as weak and decadent because it accepted the ancient practice of pederasty, in which men had sex with adolescent boys. This portrayal helped justify colonial claims by Europeans to power in the face of the self-evident decline of the Ottoman Empire. In turn, some western artists promulgated a homoerotic orientalism: they judged non-western cultures for their supposed licentiousness, while simultaneously catering to the erotic fantasies of a European public. Numerous artists developed counter-narratives to this colonial instrumentalization. The Mexican painter Saturnino Herrán (1887–1918) emphasized same-sex desire as a part of precolonial Aztec culture. The Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt (1900–1944) showed the male body caught between colonial modernity and local traditions. In Harlem, New York, a Black, largely queer, cultural scene developed: the Harlem Renaissance. This movement created a new African American selfunderstanding and a distinct aesthetic as a counter narrative to settler colonialism and racism in the USA.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Harlem Renaissance in New York marked a defining moment of cultural and artistic innovation that brought forth a modern African American identity and aesthetic. Queer artists, musicians, and intellectuals such as the American sculptor Richmond Barthé (1901–1989) made significant contributions. Within this scene, there were spaces of relative freedom. In public, however, sexuality and gender identity mostly had to be concealed. Barthé’s work was inspired by the Senegalese dancer François “Féral” Benga (1906–1957), who—like the American dancer and singer Josephine Baker (1906–1975)—took Parisian stages by storm. For audiences at the time, both embodied the image of the “exotic,” a role that Benga consciously played with. Barthé’s sculpture was created after seeing him onstage in Paris in 1934. Barthé draws upon the idealized body image of Greek antiquity in his sculpture and transposes it onto a Black body. This gesture was both aesthetic and political. It follows the concept of the “New Negro” developed by philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke (1885–1954), a friend and supporter of Barthé. The philosopher encouraged Black artists to draw freely from African, African American, and European cultures, including classical traditions, and shape them into a modern, self-assured identity. For Locke, who was also homosexual, Greek antiquity offered a historical framework in which desire between men could be imagined as natural and culturally grounded, since same-sex relationships were socially acknowledged there.

Saturnino Herrán Guinchard (1887–1918), known as Saturnino Herrán, was a pioneer of Mexican mural painting, which gained international recognition in the early 20th century. In this history painting, Herrán looks back longingly to the time before the oppression and exploitation of Indigenous populations by European colonial powers. He was particularly drawn to the Aztecs—who commonly referred to themselves as the Mexica—a civilization that flourished in central Mexico from the 14th to the early 16th century. Their cosmology, social structures, and attitudes toward the body stood in stark contrast to European norms. Especially striking to Herrán was their understanding of sexuality and gender as flexible rather than fixed. In Mexica belief, gods could take on human shape and shift between masculine and feminine forms. Gender, like divinity itself, was understood as mutable rather than biologically determined. Although a binary distinction between male and female existed, gender was not considered a fixed characteristic. In Nuestros dioses antiguos (Our Ancient Gods), Herrán depicts Mexica figures in a sensuous, openly homoerotic manner. Drawing on pre- colonial cult images, ritual depictions, and the elaborate garments and ornaments, he evokes a world untouched by European moral codes surrounding sexuality and gender. The painting functions as an act of resistance: in early 20th-century Mexico—a society shaped by rapid modernization, global exchange, and the transformation brought about by the Mexican Revolution—Indigenous culture appears as a counter-model to colonially-influenced narratives.

Successful in his time but little-known today, the Spanish painter Gabriel Morcillo (1887–1973) depicts three bare-chested men in theatrical poses in Fructidor. They hold overflowing baskets of fruit, wine, and musical instruments. Their bodies are loosely draped with flowing fabric and adorned with headscarves and jewelry—details drawn from the orientalist pictorial tradition that portrayed West Asian cultures as sensual, licentious, and decadent in deeply racist ways. Within European colonial thinking, such stereotypes were often linked to homosexuality, which was framed as a sign of moral and political weakness. Although his works appear openly homoerotic, Morcillo repeatedly received portrait commissions from the regime of Francisco Franco (1892–1975). In Francoist Spain, homosexuality was criminalized and treated as a social threat. Nevertheless, Morcillo’s proximity to the regime may have protected him, even as homophobic rumors circulated about his private life. Franco’s circles did not reject his paintings but presented them as moral warnings: images of what would have happened had Spain not been “reclaimed” as a Christian empire in 1492 after nearly eight centuries of Islamic presence on the Iberian Peninsula. Unlike other colonial powers, Spain not only projected an orientalizing gaze toward West Asia and North Africa, but was also itself subjected to such a gaze. Because of its Islamic past, it was often seen as “oriental” and “exotic.” This double position shaped Spanish self-perception and informed artists like Morcillo, who absorbed and reflected these views.

In 1883, the former colony British Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka, criminalized “unnatural sexual intercourse.” This British law remains in force in Sri Lanka today, even though homosexuality is no longer actively prosecuted. Like the island of Capri in Italy or Bali in Indonesia, Sri Lanka was nonetheless an important meeting place for homosexuals. The philosopher, poet, and activist for homosexual rights, Edward Carpenter (1844–1929), described the island as a paradise for homosexuals. While in the 1930s, the Italian writer Giovanni Comisso (1895–1969) dubbed Sri Lanka a “tropical Athens” due to the strong presence of homosexuality. References to homosexual desire also found their way into local art during this period. Alongside the work L’après-midi by the artist David Paynter (1900–1975), this is particularly evident in the work of the filmmaker, photographer, and pianist Lionel Wendt (1900–1944). Wendt was a cofounder of the 43 Group, an association of artists living in the region who opposed colonial rule and its value systems. Through openly homoerotic depictions of nudity and desire, he challenged the prevailing moral codes of British colonial society. Wendt worked with various photographic techniques, including distortions caused by strong overexposure, so called solarization, as well as photomontages. His photographs depict people, landscapes, and cultural sites in present-day Sri Lanka. Some works have a surrealistic and experimental quality, while others are more documentary in nature.