SOUP’69 – exhibition
Author: Mari Laanemets
Keywords: artists’ union, non-art venue, pop art
- The poster. Author: Leonhard Lapin (courtesy of Art Museum of Estonia)
Date: December 1969
Participants: Ülevi Eljand (1947), Ando Keskküla (1950-2008), Leonhard Lapin (1947), Gunnar Meier (1942-2003), Rein Mets (1942-2011), Andres Tolts (1949)
Location: Café Pegasus, Tallinn
Cafés were important exhibiting spaces for unofficial art. However, the Writers’ Union’s Café Pegasus was an official exhibition space for which the Artists’ Union was responsible. Still, censorship was milder there, and it gave young artists the chance to present their work. In December 1969 the legendary Pop Art exhibition “SOUP’69”—the poster depicted a Warhol soup can being “pried open by Estonians”—proclaimed the arrival of Pop in Estonian art.