Ülo Sooster

{{Short description|Estonian painter (1924–1970)}}

{{Expand Estonian|date=December 2008|topic=bio}}

{{Infobox artist

| name = Ülo Sooster

| image =

| caption = Eye in the Egg (1962) by Ülo Sooster

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1924|10|17}}

| birth_place = Ühtri, Käina Parish, Hiiumaa, Estonia

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1970|10|25|1924|10|17}}

| death_place = Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

| nationality = Estonian

| field = Painting

| training = Tartu Art College

| movement = Modernism
Soviet Nonconformist Art

| website = https://sooster.ee

| patron =

| awards =

}}

Ülo Ilmar Sooster (October 17, 1924 in Ühtri, Käina Parish – October 25, 1970 in Moscow){{Cite web|url=http://www.geni.com/people/%C3%9Clo-Sooster/6000000007790132273|title=Ülo Ilmar Sooster}} 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).{{cite news |last1=Mäeumbaed |first1=V. |title=Hiiumaa ajaloomälestised |url=https://dea.digar.ee/cgi-bin/dea?a=d&d=noukogudehiiumaa19720224.2.10&e=-------et-25--1--txt-txIN%7ctxTI%7ctxAU%7ctxTA------------- |access-date=March 3, 2024 |work=Nõukogude Hiiumaa |issue=24 |date=February 24, 1972 |page=3}} 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 the Karaganda camp.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) In 1956, during the Khrushchev Thaw, he was released and 'rehabilitated' by denouncing Stalinism.[http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00172299 SOOSTER, Ullo (1924 - 1970), Painter, animation artist] in Bénézit 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:

{{bquote|"Khrushchev walked around the room, went up to Yulo's blue painting and asked: "What is this?" "A lunar landscape," Yulo answered. "Have you been there, asshole?" Khrushchev began to yell wildly. And Yulo answered: "That's how I imagine it." "I'll send you to the West, formalist, no, no, I'll deport you, no, I'll send you to a camp!" Khrushchev continued to rage. And Yulo answered: "I've already been there." Then Khrushchev said that no, he wouldn't deport him, but he would re-educate him."Фёдор Ромер, "Рыбий глаз", Еженедельный Журнал, January 15, 2002 ([http://www.artinfo.ru/ru/news/main/OKA-14-Sooster.htm online copy])}}

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 1996Kabakov I., Ülo Soosteri piltidest: subjektiivseid märkmeid, Tallinn: «Kunst» publishing house, 1996 after emigrating to New York.