Olaf Nehmzow was born in Schwerin (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) in 1949. From 1976 to 1981 he studied painting at the Weissensee University of the Arts in East Berlin. He held a lectureship there between 1989 and 2003 and at the Babelsberg Film University in Potsdam in 1993. In 1999 and 2003, he received a guest professorship at the then John F. Kennedy University in San Francisco. In 2018, he was awarded the Paula Modersohn-Becker Art Prize. Nehmzow lives and works in Berlin.