Eesti kunsti oksjonid

Ink on paper. 1966.
Signature: Sooster 66

The portfolio of Ülo Sooster (1924-1970), the leading figure of Estonian surrealism whose centenary is being celebrated by the Estonian art community this year, includes numerous figurative drawings. Sooster was an impulsive and emotional draftsman and as an artist, he was interested in paradoxes and unusual relationships when capturing the human figure.

The first manifestations of the giant motif appear in Sooster’s work in 1966 when he completed his “Breast” painting, which is depicted against a mountainous landscape. The present ink drawing was also completed in the same year, which, on the one hand, is a feminine paraphrase of Le Corbusier’s famous masculine modular proportion system.

But on the other hand, Sooster turns physical proportions on their head and gives the woman’s torso gigantic dimensions, as if emphasizing the much greater power hidden within her than one might think. The drawing comes to auction from the estate of art historian Mari Pill to whom Ülo and his wife Lidia Sooster personally gifted it.

That is why Lidia’s corresponding dedication to her dear Mari is written at the bottom. Pill was one of the intermediaries who brought Ülo Sooster’s work to Estonia and, among other things, organized Sooster’s solo exhibition in the Tartu Art Museum in 1985. In 1986, she wrote the article “Ülo Sooster. Innovator and Bearer of Traditions” in the first issue of the magazine Kunst.

Text: Harry Liivrand, Katre Palm