Hartwig Ebersbach was born in 1940 in Zwickau (Saxony). From 1959 to 1964 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig under Bernhard Heisig. From 1979 to 1983 he held a teaching position there for experimental art. In the 1980s he was a member of the Leipzig artists’ group “37,2”. In 1982 he was honoured with a retrospective at the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg and in 1985 received the Art Prize of Düsseldorf Artists. In 1992 Ebersbach was a founding member of the Free Art Academy in Leipzig and in 1996 was appointed a member of the Saxony Academy of Arts in Dresden and the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He was awarded the Jerg Ratgeb Prize, Reutlingen, in 2006 and the Max Pechstein Prize of Honour of the City of Zwickau in 2017. Ebersbach lives and works in Leipzig.