MATT (Charles Kerbs)

NOTE: The following article is NSFW and includes images of sex and artistic nudity.

Known professionally by his pen name MATT, Charles Kerbs (1940–2002) was an American illustrator, actor and playwright active in his native New Orleans and in New York City during the latter half of the twentieth century. Celebrated for his dynamic depictions of male wrestlers, he was memorialized by fellow erotic artist Bill Schmeling (The Hun) as the “all-time great erotic wrestling artist.” [1]

As a teenager, Kerbs was an early subscriber to Physique Pictorial where he encountered the homoerotic work of artists such as Harry Bush and Tom of Finland. At just sixteen years old, his own illustrations were published in the physique magazine, Grecian Guild, which marked the beginning of a career as an erotic artist that would span some four decades.

MATT (Charles Kerbs). “Cock Wrestling Championship.” Ink, alcohol marker, and graphite on paper. Offered in AFTER DARK on 11 December 2025.

In the 1960s, Kerbs submitted a portfolio to Bob Mizer of the Athletic Model Guild (AMG). Mizer suggested that he adopt the professional name “MATT”, an acronym for “men-on-the-mats”, in reference to Kerbs’ dynamic wrestling compositions.

Kerbs’ work celebrated hypermasculine archetypes —cowboys, cops, construction workers, servicemen, sailors and leathermen— rendered in bold lines with exaggerated musculature and often depicted in bondage or erotic scenarios. His illustrations regularly appeared in influential fetish and leather publications including Drummer. Kerbs also designed calendars, posters, book covers and illustrated nearly every issue Honcho published during his lifetime as well as the short-lived Foreskin Quarterly magazine. Toward the end of his career, Kerbs began self-publishing mail-order portfolios of his drawings and adult comic books.

MATT (Charles Kerbs). Ink and graphite on paper. Offered in AFTER DARK on 11 December 2025.

His first exhibition took place in the early 1970s at the Gallery House in his hometown of New Orleans. He exhibited at Stompers Gallery in New York, which was strongly associated with the leather and fetish community, as well as at the Leslie-Lohman Gallery (now the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art) and the Drummer Erotic Art Show. During the 1990s, he participated in the Tom of Finland Foundation’s Erotic Art Fair. In 1997, the San Francisco-based Brush Creek Media published 'Rasslers, 'ranglers & Rough Guys: The Erotic Art of Matt, a major compendium surveying nearly forty years of the artist’s erotic illustrations. In a preface, the editor of Honcho Doug McClemont concluded: “His works, almost all classics of the genre, have become a collective time capsule of gay fantasy life”.[2]

MATT (Charles Kerbs). Ink and graphite on watercolor paper. Offered in AFTER DARK on 26 February 2026.

Beyond his career as an artist, Kerbs was active in the New Orleans theater scene. After relocating to Manhattan in the 1960s, he became involved in the burgeoning Off-Broadway movement at Caffe Cino by writing and acting in his own one-act plays. Kerbs designed Mardi Gras costumes and posters, including for the gay Krewe of Petronius, and painted Art Nouveau-style murals and window displays for the D.H. Holmes department store in New Orleans.

Kerbs passed away in March 2002 from pneumonia while awaiting a heart bypass procedure. He was survived by Jeffrey Johnson, his partner of seventeen years. Kerbs’ erotic illustrations have been collected by the Leather Archives & Museum and Tom of Finland Foundation.

Notes

Disclaimer: Kerbs should not be confused with the later web-based illustrator HS Muscleboy (who also signed his work as “MATT” while active in the 2000s) noted for his erotic drawings of high school jocks.

[1] The Hun, “Remembering MATT”, Tom of Finland Foundation Dispatch (Fall 2002): https://www.worldoftomoffinland.com/foundation/Dispatch/Dispatch2002aug/Matt.htm

[2] MATT, Rasslers, 'ranglers & Rough Guys: The Erotic Art of Matt, ed. Joseph W. Bean. San Francisco: Brush Creek Media, 1997.

Contributors

Barry Oliver
Cataloger, LGBTQ+ Art & Material Culture