Ülo Sooster

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Ülo Sooster
Born(1924-10-17)17 October 1924
Died25 October 1970(1970-10-25) (aged 46)
NationalityEstonian
EducationTartu Art College
Known forPainting
MovementSurrealism
Soviet Nonconformist Art

Ülo Ilmar Sooster (October 17, 1924 in Ühtri, Käina Parish – October 25, 1970 in Moscow)[1] was an Estonian nonconformist painter.

Ülo Sooster was born the village of Ühtri on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa. He was the son of Johannes Sooster and Veera Sooster (née Tatter) and had a sister, Meedi, two years younger. His father was later remarried to Linda Vahtras. He was the cousin of the ceramist Mall Valk (née Sooster).[2] He was educated at Tartu Art College where he studied surrealism during the years 1945–1949. In 1949, his studies were cut short when he was arrested and, like hundreds of thousands of other Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, he was arrested and deported by the Soviet authorities to Gulag. Sooster was sentenced to ten years of hard labour in a Karaganda camp.[3] In 1956, during the Khrushchev Thaw, he was released and 'rehabilitated' by denouncing Stalinism.[4] He returned to Estonia in 1956, but in 1957 he went to Moscow, and began intensive practice as non-conformist artist. In 1962, he exhibited his work Eye in the Egg at the Manege exhibition that later was a turning point in the acceptance of modern art: though Soviet premier Khrushchev disapproved and threatened to send the artists to Siberia, the public understood that only membership in the artists' union would be denied and no one would be executed or exiled.

Sooster worked with Ilya Kabakov who wrote a monograph of Sooster's work which Kabakov kept throughout the Soviet period and which Kabakov finally published years later in 1996 after emigrating to New York.

Personal life[edit]

Ülo Sooster married Lidia Serh in 1956. Their son, Tenno-Pent Sooster, was born in 1957 and would go on to become an artist.

Exhibitions[edit]

  • 1966 : Poland, XIX Festiwal Sztuk Plastycznych, Sopot – Poznań: Biura wystaw artystycznych.[5]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Ülo Ilmar Sooster".
  2. ^ Mäeumbaed, V. (February 24, 1972). "Hiiumaa ajaloomälestised". Nõukogude Hiiumaa. No. 24. p. 3. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  3. ^ More than 10% of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to penal servitude in Siberia or Kazakhstan Gulag camps in the years after World War II : Heinrihs Strods, Matthew Kott (Spring 2002). "The file on operation "Priboi": A re-assessment of the mass deportations of 1949". Journal of Baltic Studies 33 (1)
  4. ^ SOOSTER, Ullo (1924 - 1970), Painter, animation artist in Bénézit
  5. ^ Второй русский авангард, или Визуальная культура эпохи холодной войны//АртГид, 2013 (Russian).