(Image via Tom of Finland)

Tom of Finland, the artist known for his musclebound sexaholics, died 26 years ago today — but he's never really gone away ...

After making his debut furtively in the '50s, when his highly stylized images of sex-crazed bodybuilders and leather daddies began creeping into Physique Pictorial and other beefcake publications, Tom of Finland (aka Touko Valio Laaksonen) attracted a cultish following among men who began reshaping their bodies to his hitherto impossible ideals.

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They called themselves Tom's Men, and a good percentage of gay men strutting around to this day would fit neatly into that category, or would at least echo.

(Image by Josh Paul Thomas for BOY Magazine)

Battling censorship throughout the '60s, by the '70s, he was an emergent gay icon, and his art gained acclaim. It also started selling for impressive prices.

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In the February 1979 issue of Mandate, a pioneering gay nudie mag that also featured socially redeeming content, Tom explained one aspect of his aesthetic:

When I started drawing twenty years ago, sailors were very popular. Then types like the cowboys and others. Two or there years ago the hardhat became very popular and still is today. Uniforms are very popular, equally so both here and in Europe. The only one, the one that has remained timeless, the classic, is blue jeans with the leather jacket. Others come and go but not this one. Blue jeans have always ben a symbol of some kind of sexuality. Just as leather has, for hundreds of years, had an alliance with sexuality and something very sensual.

And so it seems Tom of Finland could be looking at hundreds of years of affiliation with sex and sensuality among gay men.

RIP, Touko.

Newly released textiles featuring Tom's imagery (Image via Tom of Finland)