Heinz Trökes was born in 1913 in Hamborn on the Rhine (North Rhine-Westphalia). From 1933 to 1936 he completed studies at the School of Applied Art in Krefeld. After the war he maintained contact to the Dutch COBRA group. He participated several times in documenta in Kassel and the Biennale in Venice. After a number of teaching appointments he became a professor at the University of the Fine Arts in West Berlin in 1965. The recipient of numerous prizes, in 1983 he was given a retrospective at the Nationalgalerie in West Berlin. Trökes died in Berlin in 1997.