Harald Metzkes was born in 1929 in Bautzen (Saxony). After the Second World War he studied painting until 1953 at the Academy of Art in Dresden and was a master student at the German Academy of Arts, East Berlin, from 1955 to 1958. In the 1970s he was awarded the National Prize of the GDR and the Käthe Kollwitz Prize of the Academy of Arts of the GDR. 1977 was the year of his first major solo presentation, in the Nationalgalerie Berlin, and 1984 he took part in the Venice Biennale. In 2007 he was awarded the Hannah Höch Prize of the State of Berlin and in 2012 the honorary prize of the prime minister of the State of Brandenburg for his life’s work. Metzkes has lived and worked in Wegendorf near Berlin since 1992.