Yulo Ilmar
Johannesovich Sooster

Studied at the Tartu state art Institute (1945-1949). Arrested in 1949, together with a group of fellow students on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda and the creation of a terrorist group intending to hijack a plane to escape to France (actually discussed upcoming internship in Paris). All work in the workshop, was ordered to burn.

Sentenced to 10 years in the camps. Released and rehabilitated in 1956.

From 1957 he lived in Moscow, earned a living design magazines and books (the publishing house "Knowledge", etc.). Besides working on the orders of the publishing house "Knowledge", Sooster as a production designer, along with his friend and colleague Yuri Sobolev-Nulevym made the cartoon "the Glass harmonica" (directed by Andrey Hrzhanovsky, 1968) to music by Alfred Schnittke, written specifically for this project. This animated film was banned in 1969.

Contemporaries Sooster remember him primarily as a philosopher, an intellectual, a man reflecting about the foundations of the universe. Not coincidentally, perhaps, the main theme of his work became the image of eggs — the symbol of the source of life, symbol of the resurrection of Christ, the symbol of the miracle of the Jews, the symbol of the sun among the ancient Egyptians, and even the symbol of victory over death.

Another often repeated story Sooster steel junipers — of the forty thousand bushes, which appeared him in a dream and he never managed to finish.

His paintings often consist of surreal mysteries ("Landscape with the eyes", 1968).

Sooster: the Exhibitor of numerous domestic and foreign exhibitions, including the exhibition of paintings of Studio Belutin B. Communist str ("x") with the participation of E. Unknown, Sobolev-Nolev, Vladimir Yankilevsky (1962). Participated in the exhibition "30 years MOSKh" in the Manege (Moscow, 1962). According to the testimony of Lydia Sooster, N. S. Khrushchev, "assessing" a lunar landscape in the painting of the artist, suggested that instead of the moon to send the author of "plein air" in the camp. But knowing that Sooster in the camps have already been decided re.

Today the best pictures Sooster are stored in Museum collections and private collections, including at the Moscow Museum of modern art, the Museum of fine arts of Estonia, the Museum Tsimmerli Rutgers University (NJ, USA), Tartu art Museum (Estonia).