Saw & Axe, 1987
Aquatint, 20" x 14"
Kaisa Puustak was born in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1945, where she has remained as an artist and printmaker. Puustak comes from a family of artists; her grandfather was a stone craftsman, her mother and aunt are both porcelain artists, and her husband is a graphic artist. She studied graphic arts at the State Art Institute (Estonian Academy of Arts), graduating in 1963, and continued in academia as a professor of graphic arts at the State Art Institute, where she served as dean of the Department of Fine Arts. Commercially, she designs posters and postcards, as well as illustrating children’s books. She particularly focuses on still-life prints, drawings, and paperworks, which have been shown internationally in such countries as Russia, Finland, and Australia, as well as in the permanent collections of the Art Museum of Tallinn in Tartu, Estonia; the University of New Orleans; and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany. Puustak has received numerous honors, including the Vilnius 1981 year’s printmaker, the Stabilo Prize for Children Books, and awards for her illustrations for Seto fairytales.