Press Release
17 April 2026

A total of 23 entries by 19 authors were submitted to the design competition for a monument to the artist Ülo Sooster, organized jointly by Sooster Foundation and the Municipality of Hiiumaa. The competition proved both popular and of a high artistic standard, which made the jury’s task of selecting the very best proposals from among many strong submissions far from easy.

The entries were evaluated by a six-member jury consisting of Tenno Pent Sooster, Ülo Sooster’s heir and legal holder of the copyright, member of the Estonian Artists’ Association; Kaire Nõmm, architect of the Municipality of Hiiumaa; Helgi Põllo, researcher at Hiiumaa Museums and cultural historian; Liisa Kaljula, Head of the Painting Collection at the Art Museum of Estonia and art historian; Aleksander Meresaar, Head of the Sculpture Collection at the Art Museum of Estonia, art historian and conservator; and Mikhail Ayvazov, member of the board of Sooster Foundation.

The winning design of the competition was “Forms” by sculptor Aleksander Litvinov and architect Tarmo Õkva, which takes its point of departure from Ülo Sooster’s painting of the same name, giving the artist’s emblematic work a permanent form as a bronze sculpture and skillfully linking it with the public space in front of Kärdla Music School. Owing to the high overall quality of the submissions, the jury decided, in addition to the winner, to designate three further prize-winning places. Second prize was awarded to Viktor Kiss for “The Man Who Dried a Towel in the Wind”, while third and fourth places were shared by Vergo Vernik, Toivo Tammik and Andres Mägi with “Junipers”, and Jass Kaselaan with “A Juniper Grown from the Brain”.

In the jury’s view, it was important that the proposals for the monument to Ülo Sooster relate meaningfully to the artist’s creative legacy and demonstrate the ability to create an effective and memorable work of public art that takes into account the distinctive context of Hiiumaa and fits the small-town setting of Kärdla. Jury chair Tenno Pent Sooster commented: “As there was consensus among the jury members that the monument should commemorate not so much Ülo Sooster as a person, but rather his creative legacy, preference was given over figurative solutions to entries that engaged more closely with the symbolic language, formal imagination and creative spirit of Sooster’s work.”

In terms of material, the jury preferred relatively low-maintenance materials that have proven their durability over time and that would help ensure the long-term preservation of the monument. Jury member Kaire Nõmm noted: “Among the competition entries, particular attention was paid to those that could speak to people passing by every day in Kärdla, including schoolchildren, and that seemed to have greater potential to become a meaningful landmark also for visitors to Hiiumaa.”

Ülo Sooster (1924-1970) was one of the most important innovators and leading figures in Estonian and Eastern European art in the second half of the twentieth century. His difficult life journey took him far from his birthplace on Hiiumaa - first to the Karaganda prison camp in Kazakhstan and later to Moscow, where he died in 1970 at the age of 46. Also dating from his mature Moscow period is Sooster’s artistically distinctive painting “Forms”, in which his interest in surrealism and abstractionism merges with the juniper motif derived from Hiiumaa’s nature and developed further in his work.

In cooperation with the Municipality of Hiiumaa, the site selected for the monument is the square at Uus Street 4 in the centre of Kärdla, close to Sooster’s former school and to several educational institutions located there today. The monument will be inaugurated in the centre of Kärdla on the 103rd anniversary of Sooster’s birth, on 17 October 2027.

For more information:

Sooster Foundation
info@soosterfoundation.org
soosterfoundation.org