Gerd Sonntag was born in 1954 in Weimar (Thuringia). In 1973 he began studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig but abandoned the course. He moved to East Berlin. From 1980 to 1982 he had a scholarship at the Academy of Arts of the GDR and was a master student of Theo Balden. A solo exhibition was held at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York in 1989. Since 1998 Sonntag has worked intensively with glass. He lives and works in Berlin.