Ritva Puotila was born in 1935 in Viipuri, in Karelia. She lived the first years of her life, before the Second World War, in the countryside. During the war her father passed away and her mother, who worked at the Railways company, rose her. Ritva’s mother cultivated several artistic hobbies, which she transmitted to her daughters since they were little.
Ritva has been dreaming to become an artist since she was a child. During the War she begins to play and create her own dresses. 
She studies at the Industrial Art Academy and begins to study theatre drawing. She gets her degree in Architecture in 1959 in Helsinki.
She begins to co-operate with various companies before joining Woodnotes, in 1987, as art director. She works with different materials: wool, canvas, silk, glass, ceramic tiles, before finding her material, the paper thread.
“I realised how wood thread would express the pure beauty typical of my country and so I started up my incessant experimentation with the paper thread as a mean of expression”.
In 1960, in her twenties, she is awarded her first prize, a golden medal at the XII Triennale of Milan. In the following years she received many other awards.
In 1988 she works as a design consultant for the UN International Trade Centre.  
Her works belong to many American and European Museums collections, among which the M.O.M.A. (Museum of Modern Art) in New York.
In 1995 she takes part to the exhibition “Classica Makers” in Helsinski.       
In 2000 her works were displayed in an exhibition at the showroom De Padova in Milan.