What happened in this Culture story?

Pakistani American painter Salman Toor prepares for his first European solo show, "Someone Like You," at London's Courtauld Gallery, where his queer South Asian figures will hang alongside the baroque masters that shaped his style.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Salman Toor**, the 43-year-old Pakistani American artist, will open "Someone Like You," his first European solo show, at London's Courtauld Gallery next month, curated with Elena Crippa.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**Toor**'s 2022 painting "Four Friends" sold for $1.2m at Sotheby's, and the New York Times has called him "one of the most fascinating painters of his generation."

Salman Toor Lands First European Solo Show at the Courtauld — SkimNews

By The Guardian Culture · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-21

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Salman Toor, the 43-year-old Pakistani American artist, will open "Someone Like You," his first European solo show, at London's Courtauld Gallery next month, curated with Elena Crippa.
Toor's 2022 painting "Four Friends" sold for $1.2m at Sotheby's, and the New York Times has called him "one of the most fascinating painters of his generation."
Born in Lahore into a middle-class Muslim family, Toor moved to the US in 2002, earned his MFA from Pratt Institute in 2009, and gained US citizenship during the period his exhibited works span.
Toor's signature emerald green paintings — including a 2019 homage to Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" relocated to New York's East Village — center queer brown men in scenes drawn from his own nightlife.
The exhibition lands amid what Toor calls "Mamdani's New York," a surge for South Asian and Muslim communities after Zohran Mamdani's mayoral win; Toor painted Mamdani's portrait in 2007 at the request of his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair.
Toor is currently working on a portrait of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student detained over three months during the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestine speech.

Why it matters: The Courtauld show marks Toor's first major European institutional platform after a $1.2m Sotheby's sale and NYT-acclaimed US career, placing his queer South Asian figures inside a gallery built around Manet, Rubens, and Van Dyck — a deliberate inversion of whose bodies get to occupy art history's canonical spaces.