Salman Toor: Someone Like You opens at The Courtauld in London on 2 October 2026, marking the first solo exhibition in…

Salman Toor: Someone Like You opens at The Courtauld in London on 2 October 2026, marking the first solo exhibition in Europe of the Lahore-born, New York-based painter.

Bringing together 19 paintings, the exhibition explores human connection, friendship, love, solitude and the desire for belonging. Toor’s fictional scenes are rooted in personal experience and memory, moving between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. His figures inhabit shared spaces as well as moments of isolation, reflecting the complexities of contemporary urban and emotional life.

Toor’s paintings draw deeply on art history, particularly Baroque and 18th-century painting, while also engaging with the visual traditions of South Asia. At The Courtauld, this dialogue becomes especially direct in The Bar on East 13th (2019), which revisits Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), held in the museum’s collection.

Alongside the exhibition, Salman Toor: Drawings brings together a substantial group of works on paper, highlighting the importance of drawing within Toor’s practice. The display includes Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), acquired by The Courtauld in 2024, alongside works including Towelhead (2024), Beach (2023) and Three Mascots (2023).

Born in Lahore in 1983, Toor lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited internationally, including his first institutional solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2020–21 and his participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2024.

Salman Toor: Someone Like You and Salman Toor: Drawings are on view at The Courtauld from 2 October 2026 to 10 January 2027.