Category: gay illustration

Servando Cabrera Moreno

Paintings by Servando Cabrera Moreno

Some 32 years after his death, artist Servando Cabrera Moreno, born in 1923, continues to stir up controversy. Provocative, transgressive, Cabrera Moreno dared to portray the nude male body in postures too daring for the Cuba of 1960-1980, where homosexuality was more than frowned upon. It’s no secret that their sexual orientation prompted the ostracism and exclusion of many Cuban artists, and Servando was no exception.

“In the late 1960s, as a step towards his erotic phase, which was the climax of his artistic development, Cabrera Moreno made works in which the representations were intended to parallel the plant and animal worlds. In the decade of the 1970s—which in his case lasted for more than 10 years, culminating in his death in 1981—Servando preferred to sensually represent the human body,” says Rosemary Rodríguez, curator of the exhibition Epifanía del cuerpo, entitled “Epiphany of the Body”, presented at the museum as part of the celebration of his 90th anniversary.

Gerardo Mosquera commented that Servando and Umberto Peña were the first, from the 1960s, to make homoerotic art in Cuba. They were the precursors of this trend, which spread at an international level beginning in the 1970s, starting in the U.S.

The erotic theme in Cuba was approached by various artists, including ones like Carlos Enríquez, who date from the first half of the last century. In the 1960s, along with Peña and Cabrera Moreno, artists like Manuel Mendive, Raul Martínez, and Osneldo García welcomed eroticism among their themes. But Umberto Peña and Servando are recognized for daring to approach homosexuality during those difficult years.

Dieter Brandau

Dieter Brandau, Untitled Illustration, (Buffalo Rider), Date Unknown

Libre. . .como las piedras que caen,
de arriba bacia abajo,
suben los techos del mundo,
ya no es estrella más es sol.
ya no es estrella más es sol.

Free. . .like the falling stones,
from top to bottom,
the roofs of the world rise,
it is no longer a star but is the sun.
it is no longer a star but is the sun.

—Daniel Alejandro Riveros Sepúlveda, Ankole

Born in September of 1981, Daniel Alejandro Riveros Sepúlveda, known as Gepe, is a Chilean songwriter and singer. He has released five solo albums in addition to one as a member of the band “Tatter Dejao”. Considered a innovator of Chilean folk music, Sepúlveda combines the sensibilities of 1960s and 1970s Chilean folk music with a minimalist and electro-pop sound. 

Many thanks to the artis’s site: https://www.instagram.com/eraunameba/

Jürgen Wittdorf

Woodcut Prints and Linocuts by Jürgen Wittdorf

Jürgen Wittdorf is a German painter and graphic artist, mainly known through his book illustrations and large sized woodcuts and linocuts. In 1960-1961, he created a series called “For the Youth”, which portrayed young hooligans and youths either dressed in jeans or posed in full frontal nudity. This “Westernization” earned Wittdorf criticisms from the German state.

Note: An interesting and extensive article to read on the attitudes regarding homosexuality in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the last half of the twentieth-century is Eric A. Gordon’s homage to his friend Michael Kuschnia which was published in the January 2021 online People’s World. The article, which covers their fifty-year friendship and correspondences can be found at: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/homage-to-michael-my-east-german-friend-of-half-a-century/

Rene Capone

Watercolors by Rene Capone

Born in September of 1978 in Niskayuna, a small town in the mid-eastern area of New York state, Rene Carol Capone is an American figurative painter.. He attended the Parsons School of Design in New York City on a merit scholarship in the fine arts. Upon graduation in 2000, Capone moved to San Francisco to study at the San Francisco Art Institute. 

Known for his depiction of the human figure in mysterious, erotic, or whimsical circumstances, Capone often uses themes from his favorite myths and literary tales in which to place his characters. He began his career as an artist creating dreamlike, sensual, often homoerotic images of young men on deep, personal quests for love, identity, and their place in the world.

After a four year hiatus from his fine art work in which he studied the topic of child abuse, Rene Capone self-published his first authored and illustrated graphic novel, “The Legend of Hedgehog Boy”. More than just a queer fairytale of a boy in search of his identity, the tale dealt with the issue of child abuse and its consequences, both psychological and physical. The story argued in favor of self-expression and the reconstruction of one’s life after a traumatic event.

In 2014, Capone published this illustrated novel entitled “A Boy Named”, the story of boy, now more comfortable in his skin, on a quest for identity in his world. The tale is told through eighty-five illustrations by Capone as well as a collection of portraits of him taken by various photographers.  Also in 2014, Capone did thirteen  illustrations for Dorian Carbone’s children’s book “A Turtle Who Likes to Eat Fish”. 

An overall retrospective of Rene Capone’s work from 1999 to 2011 was published under the title “Any Given Moment: The Artwork of René Capone”. His most recent publication is a hardcover art book of Capone’s work from 1997 to 2018, entitled “A Boy Named Patience”, which was published in 2021. The artwork features the words of poet Dave Russo alongside the paintings. Capone’s artwork has also been  published on book covers, including publications in France and Israel,  and will be used for a series of books entitled “The Goldberg Variations”, issued by arnolandpress.com.

He took a four-year absence from creating fine art to dig deep within his psyche and painful childhood to create a series of paintings that inspired his graphic novel The Legend of Hedgehog Boy. The novel struck a deep chord within many readers, and it transformed the artist as well.– The Advocate