On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ülo Sooster, the legendary artist’s playful world is revealed at the Mikkel Museum

The exhibition at the Mikkel Museum, opening 18 October, is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Ülo Sooster’s birth, and offers a selection of works from private collections by the playful and original artist and one of the most important innovators of Estonian post-war modernism. The exhibition is being curated by Liisa Kaljula and Elnara Taidre.

Ülo Sooster (1924–1970), regardless of his short life span, left behind a legacy of thousands of drawings and paintings, which, despite the Iron Curtain, are part of the history of surrealism in Europe.

“The Mikkel Museum exhibition Sooster 100: View from Private Collections summarises the artist’s creative path, starting with his early experiments on Hiiumaa island and his painterly Pallas period in Tartu, and concluding with the highlights of his heyday in Moscow and the mysterious unfinished compositions of the last years of his life,” said the exhibition curator Liisa Kaljula.

“A gallery of self-portraits will function as an exhibition within the exhibition: it includes works from museums, and traces Sooster’s development from an underground artist excluded from public art life to a seminal figure in 20th century Estonian and, more broadly, Eastern European art history,” added the exhibition curator Elnara Taidre.

Nearly 160 works by Sooster, many of which have never been shown to the public before, will be on display. The Sooster family collection includes unfinished paintings from the artist’s final years, which give an idea of his turn to more conceptual art, and a rare pencil drawing of the famous Mona Lisa, in which the mouth and eyes have been playfully switched.

An important part of the exhibition is the collection of the Sooster family, which, thanks to the decision of the artist’s relatives, arrived in Tartu from Moscow in 1990, thus shifting the focus of the research on Sooster from Russia to Estonia. A total of seventeen private collectors have lent works to the exhibition, including a number of women collectors with interesting profiles, whose collections reveal Sooster’s special relationship with women.

As a branch of the Art Museum of Estonia dedicated to private collections, the Mikkel Museum aims to follow and reflect in its exhibitions trends and tendencies in Estonian art collecting, highlighting collections that have developed into a meaningful whole, as well as artists who have special significance as objects of collecting. “This is how the exhibition Sooster 100: View from Private Collections began, because Sooster, the Estonian artist with the greatest international influence in the second half of the 20th century, has come to the attention of many collectors in recent years. The Sooster Foundation, which was recently established as a private initiative and is dedicated to preserving and popularising the artist’s creative legacy, is clear proof of this attention,” says Aleksandra Murre, Director of the Kadriorg and Mikkel Museums.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive book dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Sooster’s birth, in which works from private collections are brought together with canonical works from museum collections, and in which the artist’s oeuvre is explored by researchers from Estonia and abroad who have been involved with Sooster over the past decade.

The exhibition will be accompanied by public and educational programmes. On Saturday 19 October, the exhibition will hold an audience day. At 1 pm, a meeting with the art historian Margarita Sooster, the grandchild of Ülo Sooster, will take place in Russian. At 2 pm., Tenno Pent Sooster, the son of Ülo Sooster, the custodian of his father’s legacy and an artist himself, will discuss his father’s works in Estonian. From 12 to 3 pm. you can also take part in a workshop making postcards with picture poetry. At 6 pm., the book Ülo Sooster will be presented at the Rahva Raamat shop in the Viru Keskus with a panel discussion involving Tenno Pent Sooster and the authors of the book.

The exhibition Sooster 100: View from Private Collections will remain open at the Mikkel Museum until 4 May 2025.

Curators: Liisa Kaljula and Elnara Taidre
Exhibition design: Mari Kurismaa
Graphic design: Mari Kaljuste (exhibition) and Tuuli Aule (book)

The exhibition and the book are supported by the Sooster Foundation, Tallinna Kaubamaja, Akzo Nobel, Tenno Pent Sooster, Margarita Sooster, Tõnis Pohla, Margus Linnamäe, Valdek Kaurit and Mart Erik.