?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
TOM OF FINLAND (1920-1991)
Untitled (Two Bikers). Graphite on paper. 301x250 mm; 11⅞x9⅞ inches. Signed in pencil, lower right. 1963.
Tom of Finland Foundation catalogue number 63.15 (with an estate certification). Provenance: ex-collection Tom Nicoll, private collection, California.
Published: Dian Hanson, Tom of Finland: XXL, Cologne: Taschen, 2009; 2016, page 179 (which dates drawing to 1963).
Under the banner Scott Studio, Tom Nicoll took physique pictures in London in the early 1960s and commissioned a leather and motorcycle-inspired series from the artist, which includes this work. Friends and colleagues, Nicoll influenced Tom's practice to use photography and live models over his imagination.
An early narrative scene, this work from Tom of Finland depicts two bikers catching a thief in the act of stealing from them or a rival motorcycle gang member. Sutble symbols in the image allude to the narrative of the image. To the left of the kneeling figure is a crowbar from the thief and a crate behind the left-hand side-standing Leatherman.
It is one of the few early works that is single image and not a narrative series.
