Richard Rosenfeld
AMERICAN, b. 1945
“Untitled (Leather Vest)”, 1978. Mixed media drawing on paper. Offered in AFTER DARK on 18 June 2026.
NOTE: The following article is NSFW and includes images of artistic nudity.
Richard Rosenfeld is a veteran fashion illustrator and educator in the United States. Rosenfeld began his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated from Parsons School of Design, New York, in 1967. He established himself within the American fashion industry, producing illustrations for Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily, The New York Times, Mademoiselle and Glamour magazine, in addition to commissions for major department stores.
Alongside his commercial practice, Rosenfeld maintained a full-time teaching career in fashion drawing and figure illustration. Beginning in 1978, he taught fashion model drawing at his alma mater, Parsons, later joining the faculty of the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1989, until his retirement in 2015. His graphic work has been widely reproduced as teaching aids and cited in fashion illustration textbooks.
Parallel to his fashion illustration and teaching careers, Rosenfeld produced an extensive body of male figurative and homoerotic art. Beginning in the late 1970s, his work appeared in gay men’s publications such as Honcho, Mandate, and Playguy, where his illustrations were prized for their “definitive eroticism.” [1]
Richard Rosenfeld. “Untitled (Leather Vest)”, 1978. Mixed media drawing on paper. Offered in AFTER DARK on 18 June 2026.
Working primarily from live models in varying states of undress, Rosenfeld combines colored pencils, pastels, and watercolors rough sketched on vellum paper. His figural studies have been praised for their immediacy which recall the psychologically charged draftsmanship of Egon Schiele:
“[Rosenfeld] applies rapid, determined, staccato-like strokes with a minimum of embellishment. In just a few minutes the page is composed, the figure is there, a psychological moment is captured, and an element of mystery is expressed.” [2]
Rosenfeld remarkably developed his astute observational practice despite lacking clear depth perception, owing to having been born blind in one eye.
Richard Rosenfeld. Untitled (Leather Chaps). 1977. Mixed media drawing on paper. Coming soon to AFTER DARK.
His first solo exhibition was presented at Leslie-Lohman Gallery in SoHo in 1978, curated by Charles Leslie, followed by a second one-man show hosted by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation in 1981. Rosenfeld’s contributions to queer visual culture were revisited in the 2014 exhibition Stroke: From Under the Mattress to the Museum at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Curated by fellow erotic artist Robert R. Richards, the exhibition examined the artistic significance of illustrations published in historic gay magazines. Stroke later travelled to the GLBT Historical Society Museum in San Francisco in 2016 and showcased the work of Rosenfeld and his contemporaries including Michael Kirwan, Tom of Finland, Kent Neffendorf, Olaf Odegaard, Dom Orejudos (Etienne), and William Schmelling (The Hun).
Notes
[1] “Art Forms,” Honcho vol. 2, no. 14 (June 1979), p. 24.
[2] Rob Hugh Rosen, “A Romantic at Heart: Richard Rosenfeld and his Art,” The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, no. 24 (Summer 2007), p. 12.
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AFTER DARK Specialist, LGBTQ+ Fine Art
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