Hans-Hendrik Grimmling was born in 1947 in Zwenkau near Leipzig. From 1966 he worked as an assistant stage designer at the Volksbühne Berlin (East Berlin). In 1969 he began studying at the Academy of Art in Dresden, and from 1970 to 1974 he continued this at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig under Werner Tübke and Wolfgang Mattheuer. In 1984 he was one of the initiators of the 1st Leipzig Autumn Salon. In 1986 he moved to West Berlin. From 2006 to 2017 he was a professor at the University of Applied Sciences Europe. Grimmling lives and works in Berlin.