Ülo Sooster. The Man Who Dried a Towel in the Wind (2020)

After seven years in a Soviet labor camp in Karaganda, the Estonian artist Ülo Sooster (1924‒1970) didn’t return to his homeland but settled in Moscow and became the most influential trend-setter for a whole generation of Soviet non-conformist artists.
In 1962 he exhibited his work Eye in the Egg at the anniversary art exhibition "30 Years of the Moscow Artists' Union" at Moscow Manege that later was a turning point in the acceptance of modern art. It resulted in Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s angry rant against "filth, decadence and sexual deviations" who threatened to send the artists to Siberia. Sooster replied with bitter humor that he had already been there.
Narrated by the artist’s son Tenno-Pent Sooster, this film features rare footage and interviews with Sooster’s contemporaries in the 1960s, as well as leading experts from the KUMU Art Museum, the Tartu Art Museum and The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.