Before AIDS, gay artist Rex drew hot men on the prowl — then he disappeared

Pre-AIDS artist Rex recently passed away in Amsterdam.

Courtesy Bob Mizer Foundation

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Before Reddit or Pornhub or VHS tapes came into existence, art was the way to fantasize over gay sex. Illustrations of hyper-masculine men getting into it, often wearing leather or dressed up as archetypes like cops or bikers, spread across queer culture in the mid-20th century — much of this work sprung from the mind and hand of artist Touko Valio Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland.

But another artist, Rex, also made a name for himself, depicting men in various states of pleasure. Rex's work adorned not just postcards and framed drawings, but pulp novel covers and the walls of legendary gay bars, like New York's Mineshaft.

Sadly, Rex passed away in late March in Amsterdam, according to the Bob Mizer Foundation, a nonprofit that preserves and promotes mid-century erotic photography and art.

"After working briefly in commercial art world during the 1960s, he changed his name to Rex and began drawing raw, unapologetically graphic depictions of the S&M subculture that was just beginning to emerge on both U.S. coasts in the 1970s," according to the Foundation. "He worked in pen and ink, using a series of tiny dots called pointillism to create his black-and-white images of explicit gay sex among roughened, muscular men in places like darkened dive bars, dingy alleyways, and seedy motels."

Rex lived such a private life that his real name and age are unknown — he was believed to be 76 or 77 at the time of his death — and he refused to be photographed. Bob Mizer Foundation historian Trent Dunphy knew the reclusive Rex, who operated a San Francisco studio decorated completely in black.

“He was a great talker,” Dunphy said of Rex. “One of my customers and I were talking and he liked Rex's illustrations. [The customer] was 100 percent straight and said to me, ‘You know, I have his drawings and he’s really disturbing. Why does he do that?’ I loved that, and I told it to Rex, who responded, ‘That’s the point!’”

Rex stopped producing drawings at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. He eventually became disillusioned with America's puritanical leanings and left for a new life overseas.

“He thought American culture was crumbling and dysfunctional,” Dunphy said, “so he moved to Europe.”

See more drawings of Rex below, courtesy of the Bob Mizer Foundation.