Artists
Photographer Peter Hujar created stark, stunning, affecting , and sometimes disturbing images in black and white.
Robert Indiana, best known as the creator of the LOVE series of paintings and sculptures, is an openly gay American artist who has incorporated autobiographical and gay themes within his work.
Best known for her series of children's books about the Moomin family of trolls, Tove Jansson, considered a national treasure in Finland, also wrote fiction for adults and was an accomplished artist and illustrator.
Eugène Jansson, sometimes described as Sweden's first gay artist, has only recently begun to receive the international attention that his accomplishments merit.
Known for his iconic yet cryptic paintings, acclaimed American artist Jasper Johns is a key figure in the transition from Modernism to Post-Modernism.
Pioneering photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston served as the official White House photographer during several administrations and earned fame as a photojournalist and documentary photographer.
Filmmaker, artist, and cultural critic Isaac Julien is the most prominent member of a new wave of black artists and filmmakers involved in examining black and gay representation.
Bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was a masterful exponent of cross-dressing, deliberately using male drag to project power and independence.
American-born artist Anna Elizabeth Klumpke is best known today as the last lover of acclaimed French painter Rosa Bonheur, but she was an accomplished artist in her own right.
French painter, portrait artist, and set designer, Marie Laurençin had a number of affairs with men, but was also associated with the lesbian salons of Gertrude Stein and Natalie Clifford Barney.
Polish-born artist Tamara de Lempicka achieved notoriety and fame several times during her life and remains popular today for her highly sexualized art deco portraits.
One of the greatest painters in the history of art and an outstanding empirical scientist, Leonardo was haunted by his illegitimacy and rumors of homosexuality.
Britain's leading photorealist painter, Michael Leonard is accomplished in a number of genres, but his dominant subject is the nude male.
American sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis lived most of her life in Rome, where she was a member of a lesbian circle of American expatriates and artists.
The leading illustrator of his day, J. C. Leyendecker created images (some of them of his lover Charles Beach, the "Arrow Man") that helped define American standards of beauty and sophistication from the 1890s to the 1940s.
The work of African-American mixed-media artist Glenn Ligon often conflates issues of race and gender and their frequently parallel histories and struggles.
German photographer Herbert List is best known for his images of young men and boys, which combine eroticism with an avant garde sensibility.
The work of Canadian painter, sculptor, and installation artist Attila Richard Lukacs is provocative and frequently fetishistic, especially in its depictions of skinheads.
American photographer George Platt Lynes made his fame as a fashion and portrait photographer, but his greatest work may have been his dance images and male nudes.
One of the most talented artists to emerge from Germany's Weimar epoch, Jeanne Mammen created some of the most sympathetic depictions of lesbians since Sappho.
Nineteenth-century German painter Hans von Marées created homoerotic drawings and paintings, especially male nudes in bucolic settings or in scenes from classical mythology.
An American-born painter who emigrated to Canada, the artist Mary Meigs is best known for her literary contributions and her feminist activism on behalf of elderly lesbians.
Best known as the model for a number of paintings by Édouard Manet, Victorine Meurent was also an artist in her own right; the loss of her identity has recently been seen as symbolic of the fate of women artists.
American photographer Duane Michals represents same-sex love and spirituality as compellingly as he does same-sex desire.
The most famous artist who ever lived, Michelangelo left an enormous legacy in sculpture, painting, drawing, architecture, and poetry; while the artist's sexual behavior cannot be documented, the homoerotic character of his drawings, letters, and poetry is unmistakable.