Berta Mäger: A Pioneering Estonian Graphic Artist

Berta Mäger (1918 – 1999) was a renowned Estonian graphic artist. Born in Petrograd to an Estonian official, Mäger lived in her ancestral homeland from 1921. After graduating from Nõmme Gymnasium in 1935, the art-loving girl enrolled in the State School of Art Industry. After five years of study, she mainly worked in porcelain painting. At the age of thirty, she entered the then Estonian State Institute of Applied Art, where she studied graphics from 1948 to 1952. With the revival of Estonian art in the second half of the 1950s, Berta Mäger mainly focused on graphics. City views, especially in etching technique “Old Nõmme” (1973), national-ethnographic series “Bread” (1978) and “Koguva legend” (1980) mark the peak of the artist’s free graphic creation. At the same time, the artist became increasingly fascinated by small format. Her work “Viru väravad” (1963) is an aquatint on paper, measuring approximately 17 x 12 cm. The left side is marked with “Akvatinta Viru väravad” and the right side with “B. Mäger. 63”.