Painter, printmaker, illustrator, and cartoonist Louis Hermann Calnek was born on on March 7, 1922 in Manchester, Massachusetts. After graduation from high school in 1940 Calnek entered the U.S. Army Air Corps, serving in World War II's South Pacific theater. After the end of the war he enrolled in classes at the Massachusetts College of Art and then the Pratt Institute, where he studied under printmaker William Auerbach-Levy and received his B.A. 

He worked in advertising and publishing as an illustrator and cartoonist and was a watercolorist and printmaker in his spare time. Among his most favored subjects to capture were the harbors and coastal villages of the East Coast. He was a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Nation's Business magazines and was employed as an illustrator for Lion Books (NY).

Calnek divided his time between Manhattan and Croton-on-Hudson with his wife, May, for forty-eight years before returning to Manchester to be nearer to their children. He died on May 3, 2008 in Manchester.