Catalonia-born, Paris-based artist Pol Anglada doesn’t dare compare himself to Tom of Finland. But he does mention that Durk Dehner, Tom’s ex and head of the Tom of Finland Foundation, may have made some casual comparisons during his three month stay at the Los Angeles residency. Perhaps it was simply encouragement to pursue his art practice full time, but the fashion designer by day, erotic illustrator by night doesn’t want to pick one path, citing both his grandmother’s work as a seamstress and his father’s extensive comic book collection as early influences on his creative pursuits.

Pol moved to Paris after leaving Barcelona with a degree in fashion design, eventually taking a full-time job at Loewe, where he currently works as a senior designer. Off the clock, Pol would let his imagination run wild, building up an arsenal of erotic illustrations that, in 2016, became a publishing collective called Free Time, and a magazine of the same name based around the concept of leisure activities.

In 2022, his small exhibition titled Hole at the Tom of Finland Foundation sowed the seed of his future residency with its 11 watercolor and colored pencil works. And in a seemingly inevitable art-fashion crossover moment, his illustrations of sculpted body-builder types were emblazoned on vests, t-shirts, and hoodies for a 2023 collaboration with his Loewe boss’s eponymous label, JW Anderson.

You can find Pol at the Paris Ass Book Fair in May, where he’ll be launching a fanzine featuring the gouache paintings produced during his LA residency. And if you’re looking for more ass in Paris, Pol recommends waking up early to spot short-shorted groups of firemen on their morning runs. And as a keen observer of the male form, I’ll trust his judgment as I set my alarm for the butt crack of dawn.

Eric Schwartau: Hi Pol!

Pol Anglada: Sorry for the back and forth.

Eric: That’s okay, you’re a fashion-art person. I didn’t know where you were in the world. The photos were from LA, then you were in London, and now you’re in Paris.

Pol: Yeah, my base is Paris. I’ve been living here for the past 13, going on 14 years. But because of my boyfriend, I’m quite often in London. And then I was in LA while doing the Tom of Finland residency. So that was just for three months from October to December.

Eric: How was your time at the residency in LA?

Pol: To give you a bit of context, I first did a small show in LA in 2022, and that’s what got me in touch with the Tom of Finland Foundation. I have a day job. I’m a fashion designer and I’ve been working a lot for the past 10 years. So I would always do my drawings or illustration projects in the evenings or on weekends. After collaborating with the Foundation on some projects and seeing Durk when I was in LA for work, he invited me to take the residency.

My time there was really amazing. It was a pause in between all the craziness and the routine that I had made for myself. All of a sudden, I had carte blanche on being able to fill my days just drawing and working on whatever I wanted. And I loved having access to the archive of Tom. Not just his collages and preliminary research, but all these amazing underground names that didn’t get to know the success that Tom had, but have contributed so much in paving the way for illustrating and drawing as not just as a way of communicating, but as an act of resistance.

Eric: What did you end up producing?

Pol: I knew that I wanted to work on three different projects. One of them being a series of small gouache paintings that I would turn into a fanzine to be released at Paris Ass Book Fair this May, which is an underground fanzine fair that they do at Palais de Tokyo. Then [I planned to] do two large scale format pencil drawings of 1.6 meters by 1 meter, and then I wound up doing a glory hole, which is what I ended up leaving at the house.

Eric: Did the glory hole get used?

Pol: At the end of the residency I had a show at the Tom House and apparently someone did get a blowjob in the glory hole.

Eric: Okay. Success.

Pol: And it’s been there for a while, so I hope it’s been used more.

Eric: Yeah, ideally you want to make a glory hole that’s functional. Do you see parallels between your and Tom’s work?

Pol: First of all, I don’t dare to compare myself to Tom because I really look up to him in the way he draws. He had a characteristic style that’s still very much part of the contemporary vocabulary. Durk—the head of the foundation and Tom’s ex—was not making comparisons, but he did draw parallel lines saying, ‘You know Tom used to be a graphic designer, and you both play piano.’ And at some point he took the leap to just drawing. I still feel I enjoy doing both. But no, I can only wish to have some kind of parallelism with Tom.

Eric: What if you could draw all the time, would you want to do that or do you still want to work in fashion?

Pol: I quite enjoy being able to do both. I’m a believer that you can do it all to some extent.

Eric: I see a painting on your Instagram captioned Top of the Hill where a guy is getting a blowjob in what looks like Los Angeles. Are these fantasies? Are you engaging in these acts, or are you more of a voyeur?

Pol: I consider myself quite a voyeur, but very much with my head in the clouds. A main inspiration throughout the whole trip in LA was my favorite book, Less Than Zero [by Brett Easton Ellis]. It’s a book that I read as a teenager without ever having been to the States. It’s a perverse Gossip Girl with a bunch of detached teenagers and 20-somethings. It’s about how people are afraid of mixing and how it’s easy to disappear here.

There was also a lot of walking because I don’t drive. In the drawings, I was trying to take these solitary landscapes of parking lots and gas stations or, how do you call it, these malls?

Eric: Strip malls?

Pol: Yes. Strip malls or just random residential streets. And then adding up this bit of fantasy with a Tumblr-days mindset.

Eric: So you didn’t set up a canvas to draw these scenes while people were getting blowjobs?

Pol: No, usually I would take a picture with my iPhone of the setting or what I like and then collage it in my head.

Eric: There’s another painting captioned Beer Truck Princess. It seems a little sad. There’s the celebratory aspect of gay sex, but then there’s also a hint of sadness. Do you see that at all?

Pol: It’s just a wandering eye. It’s imagining the horniness of the situation. The ‘Beer Truck Princess’ came up while being in Palm Springs for leather pride. I like these moments of childlike chillness sitting on the ground wearing a harness next to the beer truck, just chilling.

Eric: It is a childlike pose. He was put in timeout for sucking too many dicks. So if these are fantasy scenes, I’m curious about the depictions of the men. Do guys model for you or is it all just imagination?

Pol: It’s more from imagination.

Eric: What is your favorite body part to draw?

Pol: Butts.

Eric: Hole or just butt?

Pol: Butt cheeks. A nice back and nice arms with butt cheeks.

Eric: Okay, that’s what I thought you were going to say. You also draw a lot of jockstraps. Are you into jocks?

Pol: I’m quite into underwear, yeah.

Eric: Speaking of underwear, I’m curious about your work in fashion. You work as a senior designer at Loewe, is that right?

Pol: Yeah, as long as I’ve been living in Paris. It’s where I got my first job. I’ve been at Loewe for the past 10 years working on the women’s wear team. But just as a note, I like keeping both things quite separate. Because the work I do at Loewe, I see it more as teamwork because ultimately the creative director is Jonathan.

Eric: Noted.

Pol: With my drawings, it’s not that I seek any ego release or attention, but it’s just two very different mindsets. I grew up in a small town in Spain, in Catalonia, and on one side my grandma was a seamstress and on the other side my dad had a huge collection of spicy comics from the ’80s, like Milo Manara or Ranxerox that then led me to find Tom of Finland.

Eric: Was he showing you the comics or did you have to find them under the bed?

Pol: I found them. Not even under the bed. My parents are crazy readers, like, crazy, crazy, crazy readers. And there’s a long wall full of books. When I was between 10 and 12 and I was looking around, I remember finding this shelf that was all my dad’s comic collection and it went from Corto Maltese to Métal Hurlant to Milo Manara, who is maybe a living equivalent of Tom of Finland. He’s Italian and he draws straight sex and women amazingly. And then more spicy stuff. And I remember being obsessed with it. Obviously there were women, but there were also men, so there were drawings of dicks.

Eric: Wow. Yeah, that’s hot.

Pol: As a young boy—probably because I was 12 and we didn’t have a computer yet—but it was that feeling of discovering an erotic drawing and the rush of having that drawing in your hand. From there, I developed an interest in fanzines and printed media.

Eric: And you produce zines and printed media through your publishing collective Free Time?

Pol: I started Free Time around 2016 with a graphic design studio in Paris called Faye and Gina. It started as a portfolio of my drawings in the shape of a fanzine with posters, stickers, and t-shirts. Then we changed the format of the publication and invited people that we looked up to or friends to collaborate and make work about their free time.

Eric: Ok, speaking of Paris, are there spots that you like to watch or find men?

Pol: In Paris, one of the best, best, best, best sightings is when you wake up early in the morning on a weekday and see the firemen, who are all really hot. They usually run around all year long in very, very short shorts. And you have 12 gorgeous men just running up and down in short shorts all year round.

Eric: Are there any other cities with sexy men that inspire you?

Pol: All over England, north of Spain as well.

Eric: Okay, now I have all the information I need. Thanks, Pol!