YULO SOOSTER | Firework

signed in Latin and dated '63' l.r.; further inscribed and titled in Cyrillic on reverseoil on boardYulo Sooster (Ülo Ilmar Sooster) was an Estonian non-conformist artist who was arrested by the Soviet authorities in 1949 while he was studying at art college, and sentenced to ten years in Karlag, the Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp, one of the largest Gulag labor camps located in the steppe of modern day Kazakhstan. He was released in 1956 at the time of Nikita Khrushchev’s Thaw; he briefly returned to Estonia and moved to Moscow the following year. Sooster's apartment became a meeting place for artists, poets and actors. He shared a studio on Sretensky Boulevard with Ilya Kabakov, who was greatly influenced by Sooster.

St Petersburg, The State Russian Museum; Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery; Frankfurt am Main, Städel et al., 'Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988', 1996-1997, illustrated on p.235 of the catalogue

The board is slightly bowed. There are losses to all the edges and the corners are slightly frayed. There are pinholes to the edges. There is a layer of light surface dirt. Held in a simple wooden frame behind plexiglass. Unexamined out of frame.
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