What’s new
In the raw
7th November 2024
Real-world sex (just like real-world politics) is raw, messy, tender, exposed and chaotic, and today’s new artist, Dieter Rossi, captures all these qualities in his paintings – beautiful and horrific, gentle and harrowing. See Rossi’s powerful work now by clicking here.
Where praise is due
5th November 2024
Phalluses as noses, snakes, bulls and fruit stands, and transformed breasts and testicles as bunches of grapes – that’s the work of today’s new artist, the multi-talented Italian Piero Fornasetti. See his Elogium Mentulae (In Praise of the Penis) now by clicking here.
Pretty please!
4th November 2024
We’re three weeks into our 600 Artists appeal, and 27 of you have contributed, for which we are incredibly grateful. But that leaves 13,126 of you who haven’t yet, so come on folks, do it now! You’ll find full details at https://honesterotica.com/blog/honesterotica-600-artist-appeal-some-very-special-inducements. This is your chance to win a wonderful free erotic framed print! Please contribute whatever you can by PayPal @honesterotica …
Family challenges
30th October 2024
Motherhood, babies, children, families, gender power relationships – all grist to today’s new artist, the wonderful Swedish legend Lena Cronqvist. If erotic equates with raw, naked exploration, Cronqvist is a painter not to be missed. See her work now by clicking here.
Martin van Mäele rules!
28th October 2024
We’ve just added another four portfolios by the great Martin van Mäele to the website – Volées de bois vert, Les confessions de Miss Coote, Obscenia, and La comtesse au fouet (The Countess with the Whip). Take this opportunity to revisit van Mäele now by clicking here.
Hard Boys
25th October 2024
Today’s new artist, Californian Harry Bush, felt he had to live a double life – reclusive veteran to his family while brilliantly realising his gay fantasies on paper. A worthy match to Tom of Finland, you can see a great collection of Bush’s art now by clicking here.
Do we have to beg … ?
23rd October 2024
Very many thanks to the 21 donors who has so far given £185 for the 600 Artists appeal, but we really do need a lot more than that to keep everything afloat! Please donate whatever you can by PayPal at @honesterotica NOW. You know it makes sense and how much you value your favourite art website! Full details can be found on the honesterotica blog here.
All hands
23rd October 2024
Spanking art seems to be flavour of the month as we bring you a new portfolio by that master of the genre, Louis Malteste. Les mains chérie – Darling Hands – is his 1927 anthology of twelve first-hand ‘confessions’; you can see all his drawings for it by clicking here.
Holding the whip hand
22nd October 2024
Following the enigmatic Berlin artist Helga Bode a few days ago, we now bring you the almost equally impenetrable Richard Hegemann, with his 1920s drawings of whips and female domination. We’ve collected everything we can find attributed to him, which you can see by clicking here.
Skin in the game
20th October 2024
Today’s new artist is the groundbreaking American feminist painter Joan Semmel, who for more than half a century has been reclaiming a woman’s right to her own body and her own experience of sexuality. See a great selection of her important work now by clicking here.
Important recent updates
✨ Illustrator and portfolio lists
One of the most common requests we get (and the responses to the recent questionnaire confirm this) is that it would be really useful to have complete listings of all the artists and portfolios on the website – as of May 2026 728 artists and 2,003 portfolios!
So we’ve listened and heard … and by following this link you will find files with these listings in alphabetical order (and where there are several portfolios with the same name their artists will be in order too). The lists are in PDF format, so you can download, save and search them. They duplicate what you can already find in the artist and portfolio listings on the website, but if you’re really into erotic art and illustration and would like a quick ready reference, you should find these invaluable. Enjoy!
✨ Helping you to find your way around
You asked for it, we’ve done it – all the artists on the site now have a set of ‘Similar artists’ links at the end of their biography, so whether it’s bookplate artists, spanking artists, gay artists, whatever, you can cruise easily from artist to similar artist. Have fun!
✨ Hans-Jürgen Döpp, 1940–2025
Few people have shared their wisdom, experience – and wonderful collection of erotic art – more than Hans-Jürgen Döpp, who sadly died last year at the age of 84. For more than half a century Hans-Jürgen devoted himself to the study and collection of erotic art, not as a marginal curiosity or a private indulgence, but as an essential part of human culture. Through his work as a scholar, teacher, curator, author and collector, he helped establish erotic art as a serious field of artistic and historical enquiry. He was an enthusiastic supporter of honesterotica, sharing more than 200 of his portfolios with us, helping to make the website a unique resource of erotic art that would otherwise have been lost to the world. Read our tribute to Hans-Jürgen here.
✨ The difficult mirror
Artists, childhood, and the challenge of looking
At a time of growing concern about online child safety, we are very aware of how we handle the sensitive subject of depictions of children in art, especially ‘erotic art’. We have added an important Themes and Topics article here, which helps explore how artists over time have depicted naked children, and why it is as important to think seriously about what art is for and how we look at and experience it as about what is actually being depicted. Read the piece and see what you think.