Salman Toor’s lush, emotionally charged figurative paintings offer a rich and poignant reimagining of queer male identity, centering the lives, loves, and vulnerabilities of queer men of color. Born in Pakistan and now based in New York, Toor crafts intimate, often melancholic scenes where slender, brown-skinned figures lounge, flirt, dance, and dream within luminous, emerald-hued cityscapes. Drawing on—and subtly subverting—classical European portraiture, he inserts into the art historical canon subjects long marginalized by it.

A graduate of the Pratt Institute’s MFA program, Toor has exhibited internationally, with shows in London, New Delhi, Los Angeles, Lahore, Karachi, and New York, including a celebrated solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work has fetched six-figure sums on the secondary market, reflecting both critical and commercial acclaim. While his paintings often celebrate intimacy and chosen family, they do not shy away from portraying the societal pressures and prejudices faced by queer communities of color today.

Salman Toor

Pakistani

Main

Artist

Printer

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The Cuddlers