Male Nudes to Celebrate Men’s Health

Campaigning for raising awareness about prostate cancer, testicular cancer, men’s depression, and suicide is important. Today we are showing you male nudes in art to celebrate male beauty, and above all—men’s health.

In Studies and Sketches

The first time I saw this study I thought it could easily be a character from a comic strip. The slightly angular shapes of this model’s body give him a modern look, I would say from a 1960s comic book. Who knows, maybe one day somebody will make a “van Goghesque” comic, as they did with the movie…

Paul Cezanne was a great portraitist and this study shows us why: his precision and attention to human anatomy was spotless. Moreover, we see this man’s personality and mood, to me he looks confident and proud of himself, but is already slightly bored with posing…

This man, on the other hand, looks extremely tired (well, can anyone expect cheerful work from Edward Hopper?), or pensive. This study brilliantly shows us Hopper’s mastery of shadowing and disegno, he undoubtedly was an old-school draughtsman.

Self-Portraits

Nudes, often self-portraits, were so common in Schiele’s oeuvre because they helped him work out problems with his own sexuality. His interest in the naked body created some serious trouble for him, about which you can read here: The Pornographic World of Egon Schiele’s Nudes (18+).

Paintings

No matter female or male, the 19th century loved nudes! Every academic painter needed to have their drawing perfect, so every student at Fine Arts Academies made tons of life studies of human anatomy. For a long time, the only models accepted were men, since a naked female model was too provocative for young adepts of painting.