etching, drypoint.
(One of the last etchings by Ülo Sooster)
The Story of a Painting
Almost 30 years ago, in 1996, in New York, the artist Leonid Lamm recalled Ülo Sooster. They were united by friendship, creativity, and a shared studio... But this time Leonid Lamm remembered a specific event — the exhibition of Ülo Sooster’s works, which by some miracle was permitted, prepared, and held in Moscow in 1979 at the Gallery of the Union of Graphic Artists on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street.
"To mark the opening of the exhibition, 50 copies of one of Ülo Sooster’s last etchings were printed. On each print I wrote by hand: 'In memory of the Exhibition of Ülo Sooster. August 31 – September 18, 1979.' These commemorative copies of the etching we distributed and sent to Ülo’s friends. At the exhibition opening, there were many admirers of the remarkable artist. Artists and art critics came from Estonia. And Mari Pill gave a very interesting lecture about Ülo Sooster. It was our shared celebration, our shared victory over the machine of Soviet bureaucracy.
When leaving for the West in 1982, I donated, in memory of my friend Ülo Sooster, my illustrations to the short novels of Enn Vetemaa to the Art Museum in Tartu...
It is wonderful that most of Ülo Sooster’s works have been preserved and have found their home and care in his now independent homeland."
Leonid Lamm. New York. 1996
The Story of a Painting
...From the memories of Lydia Sooster, the artist’s wife: “On his thirtieth birthday, he painted a self-portrait, which was later kept by Ülo’s sister in Tallinn. I begged for it after my husband’s death. And when I flew from Tallinn to Moscow, I forgot the portrait on the bus. I raced back like an arrow and found two drivers chatting, who were examining the portrait. They gave it back to me with the words: ‘My God! What a fright!’ That’s how the portrait got the name ‘Fear.’”
This New Year's card was drawn by Ülo Sooster and sent to his wife Lidia in the maternity hospital at the end of December 1957. He was determined to give his son two names. But in the Soviet Union, a person could only have one name. What to do? Ülo found a solution: the two names on the letter were combined into one, so Tënno Pent was registered as Tënnopent.
In 1964, Ülo Sooster created a painting titled "Egg in the Window" in Moscow and later gifted it to Czech art historian and collector Dušan Konečný. On the back of the painting, it is inscribed in Estonian, "parimate soovidega" ("with best wishes").
In 1970, just two months after the artist's death, Dušan Konečhný donated the art work to the National Gallery in Prague.
For many years, the painting remained in the silence of the Gallery storerooms until it caught the attention of the art historian Julia Tatiana Bailey.
In 2024, those interested in Ülo Sooster's work were able to see it in Tartu at the exhibition "Surrealism 100. Prague, Tartu and other stories"