Eye in the Egg

Eye in the Egg (Estonian: Silm munas) is a 1962 oil on paper painting by the Estonian artist Ülo Sooster in the Tartu Art Museum.[1]

Eye in the Egg
ArtistUlo Sooster
Year1962
Typeoil on paper
Dimensions75.0 cm × 109.5 cm (29.5 in × 43.1 in)
LocationTartu Art Museum, Tartu

This painting shows an abstract egg-shaped form that opens into an infinite number of such opened-egg-shaped forms. It was painted in the period after the artist was released from 7 years hard labor in a Soviet prison camp when he was living in Moscow on Sretensky Boulevard with several other artists then painting and working in the non-conformist style.

Sooster was experimenting at that time with motifs of the egg taken from René Magritte, and they symbolized for him infinity, evolution, and the experience of timelessness.[2] There were so many repetitions of the egg in later works by Sooster that his grave has a stone egg on it.[2] On 1 December 1962 this work was shown in an exhibition called Manege, hoping to gain Soviet recognition for their modernist art, but which sadly backfired, receiving a threat from Khrushchev to send them all into exile.[2]

The shape of the eggs is not exact and the "eye" in the title may refer to the central shutter-like doors in the egg that are similar to the shutters over the lens of a camera, a possible reference to surveillance cameras. The edges of the egg shapes are contoured to look almost as if made in metal, a trompe-l'œil effect that gives the whole a machine-like quality, as if the "eye" could blink mechanically.

References
  1. museum record
  2. Ulo Sooster discussed by Eda Sepp in Estonian Non-conformist art from the Soviet occupation in 1944 to Perestroika, p. 148 in chapter 2 in Art of the Baltics: The Struggle for Freedom of Artistic Expression under the Soviets, 1945-1991, edited by Jane Voorhees, Alla Rosenfeld and Norton T. Dodge, exhibition catalog Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2001/2002, ISBN 978-0813530420
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