“ | Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are at risk every day of their lives. | ” |
—Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–) LGBT activist
Helmut Kolle was a German modernist painter who emigrated to France where he lived together with art collector Wilhelm Uhde for the rest of his life (which was unfortunately cut short by heart disease). Kolle's paintings almost exclusively feature males—at the start of his career rather effeminate-looking boys, sometime later muscular men, particularly sailors, toreros, and soldiers, usually in poses that are rarely overtly homosexual but certainly suggestive, at least to gay viewers. In this painting from about 1927 a torero puts his hand softly on the shoulder of a picador.