Sooster painting returns to Estonia after decades abroad

Ülo Sooster’s 1963 painting Easter Egg has returned to Estonia after decades abroad and will join the Kumu Art Museum collection, ERR reported. The work was on display at Tallinn’s Vaal Gallery until 8 p.m. on Wednesday.

The painting returned through efforts by the artist’s son, Tenno Pent Sooster, who began negotiating with the heirs to buy it back about five years ago. It had been in Italy since 1968, when it entered the collection of one of the artist’s friends.

Tenno Pent Sooster said the painting was one of his favourite works and that he remembered seeing it at home when he was about 11. He also recalled that his father experimented with materials, including theatre paint brought home by his mother, which he said hardened completely.

The Ülo Sooster Foundation, established by the artist’s heirs, also presented the first album in a planned series documenting and organising Sooster’s work. Cosmological Ülo Sooster brings together works held in museums and private collections that explore the artist’s recurring motifs of the egg, juniper and fish.

The collection includes more than 300 paintings and 10,000 works on paper in various techniques, said album editor Elnara Taidre. Future volumes are planned on Sooster’s female figures and his surrealist and abstract explorations. A small exhibition of original works featured in the album was also open at Vaal Gallery until Wednesday evening.