Queer visibility, painting and art history

50 LGBTQ+ artists who made painting history

From Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rosa Bonheur, Romaine Brooks, Frida Kahlo and Claude Cahun to Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Nicole Eisenman, Mickalene Thomas and Kehinde Wiley, here are fifty essential trajectories.

Talking about LGBTQ+ artists in the history of painting requires nuance. For ancient artists, contemporary words did not always exist: we therefore rely on documented relationships, archives, non-conforming lives or recognized queer readings. For modern and contemporary artists, visibility becomes more direct, sometimes militant, sometimes intimate.

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David Hockney, artiste LGBTQ+ majeur de la peinture contemporaine

Before the grid

A story long coded, hidden or otherwise reread

Painting has often spoken of desire without being able to name it. In the Renaissance, Baroque or 19th century, archives are sometimes fragmentary and modern identities do not overlap perfectly with past lives. But works, letters, circles of friendship, models and choices of representation open up powerful readings.

In the 20th century, the question became more visible: lesbian portraits of Romaine Brooks, male bodies of Bacon and Hockney, Pop art of Warhol, AIDS crisis in Haring, Jarman or Gonzalez-Torres, then contemporary queer painting in Eisenman, Thomas, Wiley or Hammond. This classification follows this story without reducing it to a single label.

Top 1 to 10

Renaissance, 19th century and early modernities

Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Happiness, Sargent, Solomon, Brooks, Kahlo, Cahun and Hartley open a story where desire, body, gender, portrait and visibility are read differently depending on the era.

Ranks 11 to 20

Modernisms, surrealism and non-conforming lives

Demuth, Wood, Laurencin, Abbéma, Gluck, Lempicka, Bacon, Grant, Toyen and Fini show how modern painting has welcomed ambiguous identities, minority loves and self-images.

Ranks 21 to 30

Pop, abstraction, neo-Dada and the American scene

Oppenheim, Höch, Hockney, Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Twombly, Martin, Cadmus and Haring move painting towards sign, body, community, popular culture and desire.

Ranks 31 to 40

AIDS crisis, memory and contemporary art

Basquiat, Jarman, Tooker, Hodgkin, Delaney, Gonzalez-Torres, Indiana, Adnan, Eisenman and Thomas connect painting, memory, politics, abstraction, portraiture and queer communities.

Ranks 41 to 50

Portrait, genre, diaspora and current legacies

Wiley, Craxton, Rojc, Beaton, Mehretu, Feather, Brown, Naito, Hammond and Hambling expand the LGBTQ+ history of painting into diaspora, textile, illustration, stage and material.

Method

How the 50 artists were selected

The selection favors artists whose work has marked painting, portraiture, figuration, abstraction, collage or painted images, and whose LGBTQ+ identity, relationships, gender non-conformity or queer readings are publicly documented.

For ancient figures, the classification remains cautious: it does not mechanically place contemporary categories on the past. It retains artists when archives, works or queer historiography make them important references. For recent artists, visibility, activism, AIDS, communities and the representation of desire become central criteria.

Where to start?

Three simple courses

For historical roots, start with Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rosa Bonheur, Sargent, Solomon, Brooks, Kahlo, Cahun, Hartley and Demuth. For the modern 20th century, continue with Bacon, Grant, Toyen, Fini, Hockney, Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Twombly and Martin.

For contemporary queer art, look at Haring, Jarman, Gonzalez-Torres, Hammond, Eisenman, Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, Julie Mehretu and Maggi Hambling: painting becomes visibility, memory, body, politics and freedom.

Painting as a space of desire, memory and visibility

These fifty artists show that the LGBTQ+ history of painting is not a margin: it runs through the great stories of Western and global art, from the Renaissance to Pop art, from surrealism to minimalism, from the AIDS crisis to contemporary scenes.

It also reminds us that painting has never only represented forms. She protected secrets, coded desires, invented possible bodies and opened spaces in which to recognize oneself.

Review the beginning

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