In art, LGBTQIA+-lives, LGBTQIA+ worlds, and their daily lives have throughout the centuries been shown with a highly variable degree of visual presence and visibility. Depending on moral judgments, on criminal prosecution and censorship, but also on who the artwork was intended for, the explicitness of what was depicted shifted significantly. The year 1969 marked a turning point in this un-visibility — in the international context as the year of the Stonewall Uprising on New York’s Christopher Street, which sparked a global emancipation movement, and in the Federal Republic of Germany as the year in which § 175 of the Criminal Code was liberalized, enabling gay men to present themselves openly for the first time without the fear of imprisonment. This was a breakthrough that facilitated breaking isolation and finding belonging — and it was an important step toward broad legal equality.
It took until the 21st century, however, for the entire spectrum of queer lifeworlds to find entry into the visual arts. Everyday life of LGBTQIA+ communities became worthy of depiction in painting, heavily influenced by photography. Sexual themes, body culture, and fetish found a place in artistic production. Questions of gender binary and role assignments are now also intensively processed, as transgender topics, and drag as an art form, constitute a significant part of queer representation. Contemporary artistic positions take up the concerns and anxieties of LGBTQIA+ communities and develop visionary utopias.
Only until October 26, 2025 does the exhibition “Wish You Were Queer: The Un-Visibility of LGBTQIA+ in Art and History” at the Museum im Prediger in Schwäbisch Gmünd survey the self-image, perception, and lifeworlds of LGBTQIA+. This is the occasion to describe the development of the un-visibility of LGBTQIA+ in art by incorporating key works from the show into a series of articles. Through an exemplary discussion of artworks across historical epochs, a chronological overview through the centuries emerges.
Rinaldo Hopf, Marla Glen from the series “Golden Queers”
The Freiburg-born artist Rinaldo Hopf presents Marla Glen, a Black lesbian, with extraordinary strength and self-assurance. With her head held high, Glen gazes directly at the viewer without hesitation and filled with optimism. Glen had relocated permanently from America to Europe in the mid-1990s. Most recently, in 2023, Marla Glen came out as a trans man.
The portrait — like the other works in his series “Golden Queers” — was painted in oil on gold leaf over a black-and-white background using silkscreen techniques. On this ground, 36 prominent queers are arranged in smaller portraits to form a chessboard pattern. The noble gold highlights the person in a manner reminiscent of saints in icon paintings or rulers in gilded sculptures from earlier centuries.
With his ongoing, since 1997, body of work, the series “Golden Queers,” Hopf creates a kind of ancestral gallery of queer cultural history. It includes portraits of Ludwig II of Bavaria, Jodie Foster, Socrates, Virginia Woolf, or Rock Hudson, as well as images of the drag queen RuPaul and the gay porn star Al Parker.
The self-assurance that glows so immediately and clearly in Glen’s portrait was the reason for selecting the portrait as the exhibition’s media centerpiece. In this way, it became a museum-history object in its own right, and Hopf generously donated the portrait to the Museum im Prediger in Schwäbisch Gmünd after the exhibition opened.
Kerstin Drechsel, Untitled, from the series “If you close the door”
The paintings in the series “If You Close the Door” plunge into lesbian club culture and stand as counterparts to Patrick Angus, who previously elevated the venues of gay nightlife into the realm of painting. The painter Kerstin Drechsel, however, explicitly centers the Darkroom as a semi-public space for erotic and intimate encounters, a rarity in this genre.
This subject connects with a decidedly ambivalent invitation to voyeuristically observe erotic behavior, but from a lesbian perspective — unlike earlier centuries, not for the heterosexual gaze and certainly not for a male gaze. The focus is less on the setting and more on the bodies that move within it.
A partially darkened space forms the painting’s uncertain frame. Along with the painting’s unfinished quality, it robs the image of unequivocal meaning. The restrained, functionally sexual nature of the setting stands in tension with the complexity of existential feelings, longings, and fears that are connected to it: the possibility of closeness, physical fulfillment, and love, but also loneliness and emotional wounds.
Daniel Schumann, Nynke, Aidan and Heaven
During a year-long stay in California, Düsseldorf-based photographer Daniel Schumann was deeply struck by how naturally heterosexual and homosexual families live side by side there. San Francisco, in particular, inspired him to view family from a new angle. Thus emerged the series “International Orange,” with portraits of diverse family structures that deviate from the usual heteronormative pattern.
The photograph of the mother-mother-child family from El Cerrito was taken in May 2012 and shows Nynke (34, born in Hong Kong), Aidan (3, born in California), and Heaven (31, born in Illinois) standing close, embracing and lovingly touching one another on an outdoor basketball court.
Schumann asked the family to provide a short statement about the photograph and themselves. The three wrote succinctly: “Love makes a family.” Harmony and security thus become explicit ideals of family.”
Norbert Bisky, Kiss
Norbert Bisky is one of the most successful proponents of contemporary figurative painting, translating color-saturated scenes of beauty, sexuality, violence, and destruction. His images simultaneously visualize a pronounced homoeroticism. The protagonists of his best-known works are young men whom he repeatedly stages in sexually charged situations. By inserting these moments of queer desire into the frame, the artist undermines the subjective effect of totalitarian and commercial aesthetics.
For the Leipzig-born painter (born 1970), the inclusivity of a democratic society toward LGBTQIA+ communities stands as an essential gauge of how fully such a society embraces humanist values and enables its members to live autonomously. Bisky translated these reflections in 2018 into a clear, unequivocal representation: the oil painting “Kiss.”
The image shows three men passionately kissing. Their unabashed tenderness, free of moral judgment, makes the three-way configuration feel almost utopian. In its blunt innocence, it points to the vision of a free society in which diverse, self-chosen relationships can be lived in self-determined arrangements that are by no means prescribed.
Rinaldo Hopf, Stonewall Riots 1969
Under the title “Stonewall Riots 1969,” the internationally renowned artist Rinaldo Hopf launched a comprehensive project in 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of the multi-day uprisings on New York’s Christopher Street. It includes as its centerpiece a large-format painting measuring 2 by 4.2 meters, featuring life-size figures based on scenes from the few surviving photographs of the Stonewall events and staged with models.
Painted in watercolor, acrylic, and ink on old newspaper pages, this substrate provides an authentic access to history. It uses original pages from The Advocate, the American gay newspaper published from 1969 to 1972, which reported on the New York events and the ensuing annual Christopher Street Day demonstrations on both coasts. This makes the artist’s approach particularly noteworthy, honoring the 50th anniversary with the highest level of respect for the historical achievement and its extraordinary significance.
The visibility gained by the 1969 uprisings and the ensuing worldwide emancipation movement remains fragile today. In 2025, the U.S. government aims to push transgender people out of the Stonewall Riots history, despite historical sources showing that Black transgender women Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were at the forefront. After Donald Trump’s second term, the National Park Service removed the “T” and “Q” from “LGBTQ” on the Stonewall Inn memorial page, effectively rendering it invisible again.
Isabelle Hannemann, Harry
The 1979-born artist Isabelle Hannemann presents pop icon Harry Styles in a large-format solo portrait. Styles is regarded as a queer icon, a symbol of the modern man who resists traditional gender roles. As Hannemann’s painting suggests, he wears blouses, dresses, feather boas, and experiments with jewelry and painted nails.
While the former One Direction singer isn’t a pioneer in this respect—David Bowie had already challenged boundaries with bold fashion—the fan base sees in Styles’s style something deeper: it’s a message that you are okay with how you look and who you are. In 2017, the musician told a British newspaper: “Everyone should be the way they want to be.”
Styles has also helped fans come out to their parents at various concerts. On one occasion, he shouted from the stage, “Tina, your daughter is lesbian.” For many, Styles’s concerts are experienced as Safe Spaces—discrimination-free zones around the world.
Logan T. Sibrel, Shatter II
The works of the young American Logan T. Sibrel stand as compelling examples of contemporary art that convey gay intimacy and gay desire through atmospherically dense painting. By presenting his figures in cropped, fragmentary compositions, he repeatedly tells stories that feel authentic, intimate, and vulnerable. In “Shatter II,” a 2024 work, a handsome naked man writes “To get to where you are” on his own torso.
On one level, this could be read as a longing to reach the beloved: “I want to get to where you are,” especially since the inscription is not reversed and the intended viewer can read it directly. On another level, it could be a call to stand up for oneself, to be a gay man—perhaps echoing Socrates’s exhortation to know yourself, to not get lost in words or appearances, but to carefully consider one’s own stance, actions, and inactions.
Logan T. Sibrel offers insightful self-reflections on what the self means for a gay man in his art. In an interview, he stressed that his work as an artist is very much influenced by his own life: “The viewpoint is definitely gay, because I am, and the works are also sexual, because sexuality is an arena where emotions such as sadness, beauty, fear, anger, happiness, and whatever else come to the fore most clearly. And it is the place where I can address them most honestly.”
This statement by the 1986-born painter is among the most fitting expressions from queer artists—especially from younger generations—when it comes to conveying the extraordinary importance of sexuality and sexual identity in the visual arts. It also shows how crucial LGBTQIA+ visibility in art and history remains.
