Graduated in Tallinn in 1994 and belongs to the youngest, or rather, the latest generation of Lithuanian leatherworkers who studied in Estonia. This generation made a leap from traditional bookbinding and had a strong tendency to experiment. Their work showed some postmodern features, the use of unexpected, unconventional materials and household objects (not only in decoration but also in the structure of the binding), deformations of book forms and book-objects, the first bindings with open internal structures, and some elements of conceptualism. All of this can be found in the work of Ramutė Toliušytė. She is one of the most prolific artists of this generation, and is constantly active in exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad (Estonia, France, the Russian Federation), and it is especially pleasing that she pays a lot of attention to the art of bookbinding. Her work is not boring - you can expect something new and unexpected every time, so her work is often surprising in one way or another. She is an inquisitive artist who sets herself new challenges every time. Perhaps her work does not have a strong unity of style and, when put together, it looks as if it was made by more than one person. This is because she tries to listen first to the book she intends to bind. This is an extremely important and necessary quality for a good bookbinder, who must love literature more than art. But even in the diversity of the works, we can detect certain common characteristics of the author's work. Ramutė Toliušytė's work is characterised by a distinctive, rich expressiveness, a dynamism of colour and a vibration of chaos. She seeks unusual textures, unexpected compositional solutions, and does not shy away from colours uncharacteristic of Lithuanians. An unusual feature of her work is the combination of leather and ceramics. She also uses glazed clay details in her books. In the course of history, many different materials have been used for book covers, but never broken ones. All these rebellious steps show creativity, courage and constant experimentation. With the same courage and freedom, she takes on the genre of the object book. They abandon function, sometimes even the text, but not the book as a symbol in general. The swirling words or the pages of a book climbing out of a flower's blossom speak of the same sensations evoked by the book as when reading it, but in different ways and means. This shows that not only the traditional culture of the functional, bibliophilic book is close to her and understandable, but also the latest forms of contemporary artistic expression. In her work, these radically opposite directions do not intersect or interfere with each other. This artistic flexibility, which allows one to step out and back out of the frames of tradition whenever one wishes, and to successfully maintain a balance, is not something that everyone achieves.
