Salman Toor at the Courtauld

We are proud to be the lead supporter of Salman Toor: Someone Like You, the first solo exhibition by the artist in Europe, opening at the Courtauld Gallery.

The exhibition brings together 19 of Toor’s most iconic, thought-provoking and at times humorous paintings, including works never before seen in Britain. It explores human interactions and the desire and struggle to experience a sense of belonging, both culturally and emotionally.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, Toor lives and works in New York. His works capture moments of friendship and love, as well as solitude and alienation, depicting queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement.

Rooted in a deep engagement with and admiration for the Old Masters, Toor’s work draws on a broad range of historic and contemporary references, from European art history and the Mughal School to contemporary painting, photography and graphic novels.

While Toor’s figures and scenes are fictional, they are rooted in his personal experiences and memories. Speaking of his works, he says they “depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility”.

The exhibition is accompanied by a display of Toor’s drawings in the Gilbert & Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, showcasing his mastery of drawing and the way it informs his practice as a painter.

Salman Toor: Someone Like You is on view at the Courtauld Gallery from 2 October 2026 to 10 January 2027.

About Salman Toor

Salman Toor’s sumptuous and insightful figurative paintings depict intimate, quotidian moments in the lives of imagined young, brown, queer men ensconced in contemporary cosmopolitan culture. His work oscillates between heartening and harrowing, seductive and poignant, inviting and eerie.

In many of his paintings, he creates subtly disarming depictions of familiar domestic environments in which often-marginalized bodies flourish in safety and comfort. In other pieces, Toor creates allegorical spaces of waiting, anticipation, and apprehension; border crossings into a world that may or may not be welcoming. Central to his work are the anxieties and the comedies of identity. In creating his figures, he employs and destabilizes specific tropes in order to reflect on the way difference is perceived by the self and by others. As Whitney curators Christopher Lew and Ambika Trasi have noted, Toor’s project is one that examines “vulnerability within contemporary public and private life and the notion of community in the context of queer, diasporic identity.” Furthermore, in depicting the mundane and the memorable moments of his characters’ lives, Toor reveals a deeply relatable existence, ultimately creating an opportunity for empathy through the language of painting.

About the Courtauld Gallery

The Courtauld works to advance how we see and understand the visual arts, as an internationally renowned centre for the teaching and research of art history and a major public gallery. Founded by collectors and philanthropists in 1932, the organisation has been at the forefront of the study of art ever since through advanced research and conservation practice, innovative teaching, the renowned collection and inspiring exhibitions of its gallery, and engaging and accessible activities, education and events.

The Courtauld Gallery cares for one of the greatest art collections in the UK, presenting these works to the public at the Courtauld Gallery in central London, as well as through loans and partnerships. The Gallery is most famous for its iconic Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces – such as Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. It showcases these alongside an internationally renowned collection of works from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through to the present day.

Images
Salman Toor, The Bar on East 13th (2019), Oil on panel, 91.4 x 121.9cm, Private Collection. © Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Genevieve Hanson.

Salman Toor, Citizens (2022), Oil on panel, 91.4 x 109.2cm, Private Collection. © Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Farzad Owrang.