Ülo Sooster

He was the cousin of the ceramist Mall Valk (née Sooster). He was educated at Tartu Art College, where he studied surrealism from 1945 to 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 deported by the Soviet authorities to the Gulag. Sooster was sentenced to ten years of hard labour at the Karaganda camp. In 1956, during the Khrushchev Thaw, he was released and 'rehabilitated' by denouncing Stalinism. 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 Moscow Manege exhibition that turned out to become a barrier for the official acceptance of modern art: the exhibitors received an angry reprimand from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Ülo Sooster was one of several artists, to whom Khruschev addressed directly. Sooster's widow narrated: 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.

Training under Elmar Kits is recorded. The recorded working language is Estonian. The field of work recorded is painting. Work by Ülo Sooster is recorded in the collections of Art Museum of Estonia, Indrek Hirv's art collection, Heldur Viires' private collection and Museum Ludwig.

• Name — Ülo Sooster • Born — 17 October 1924 • Birthplace — Ühtri, Käina Parish, Hiiumaa, Estonia • Died — 25 October 1970 • Place of death — Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union • Field — Painting • Training — Tartu Art College • Movement — Modernism Soviet Nonconformist Art • Website — https: sooster.ee

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

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

Recognition and collections.