Rolf Lindemann was born in 1933 in Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt). After an apprenticeship as a decorative painter, from 1951 to 1956 he studied painting at the Weissensee University of the Arts in East Berlin. From 1980 to 1989 he worked as a visiting teacher at the School of Advertising and Design in Berlin-Schöneweide (East Berlin). In 2000 he was awarded the Helen Abbott Prize for Fine Art. The taught at the Volkshochschule in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg from 1991. Lindemann died in 2017.
Elke Lixfeld was born in 1942 in Königsberg in East Prussia (today Kaliningrad, Russia). In the 1960s she lived in West Berlin. A master student in 19 at the University of Arts, West Berlin in 1979 she was a co-founder of the artists’ group and gallery “1/61”. In 1983 she held a year-long scholarship of the State of Berlin at MoMA PS1 in New York. She taught as a visiting teacher in 1988 at the University of Arts, West Berlin, and in 1998 at the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts, Ulan Bator (Mongolia). Lixfeld lives and works in Berlin.
Markus Lüpertz was born in 1941 in Reichenberg (today Liberec, Czech Republic). From 1956 to 1961 he studied at the Academy of Arts in Krefeld and at the State Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, he moved to West Berlin in 1962. In 1964 he was co-founder of the Grossgörschen 35 artists’ cooperative gallery. In 1982 he took part in documenta 7 in Kassel. From 1974 to 1986 he taught as a professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. He held a professorship at the State Academy of Art in Düsseldorf from 1986 to 1988, where he was rector from 1988 to 2009. The recipient of various awards, among them the Villa Romana Prize and the International Mendelssohn Prize of Leipzig, Lüpertz lives and works in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg) and Florence.
Giuseppe Madonia was born in 1958 in Palermo. From 1975 onwards he took part in numerous theatre projects, for example for the Palermo Theatre. In 1984 he moved to West Berlin. From 1991 to 1992 he worked as a stage-set designer for theatre productions in Treviso (near Venice). In the 1990s he began working in three-dimensional media in addition to painting. Madonia lives and works in Berlin.
Wolfgang Mattheuer was born in 1927 in Reichenbach in Vogtland (Saxony). From 1941 to 1944 he completed his apprenticeship as a lithographer. He studied at the University of Applied Art in Leipzig for a year, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig. After two years of freelance work in East Berlin, he returned to Leipzig in 1953. From 1965 to 1974 he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Awarded a number of GDR National Prizes, he took part in documenta 6 in 1977 and the 41st Biennale in Venice in 1984. In 1988 he pointedly resigned from the SED (Socialist Unity Party of the GDR). In 1993 he was honoured with the Order of Merit of theFederal Republic of Germany. 1994 saw him withdraw from the Academy of Arts in Berlin in protest. Mattheuer died in Leipzig in 2004.
Helmut Metzner was born in 1946 in Sigmaringen (Baden-Württemberg). From 1971 to 1976 he studied painting at the University of Arts in West Berlin. In 1977 a one-year DAAD scholarship took him to New York. In 2007 he was commissioned to paint a mural in the rebuilt Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Thuringia. Metzner lives and works in Berlin and Brandenburg.
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.
Ingeborg Hunzinger was born in 1915 in Berlin. From 1935 to 1936 she studied at the Berlin United State Schools of Free and Applied Art, then trained as a stone sculptor in Würzburg. During the period of National Socialism in Germany she was prohibited from working. She emigrated to Italy in 1939, then returned to Germany in 1942 and lived in the Black Forest. In 1949 she went to East Berlin. From 1952 to 1956 she attended the master class of Fritz Cremer and Gustav Seitz at the German Academy of Arts. Until her death in 2009 she worked in Berlin as a freelance sculptor.
Karl-Heinz Krause was born in 1924 in Uckermark (Brandenburg). In 1947 he began studies at the Weissensee University of the Arts in East Berlin extending those studies from 1948 to 1952 at the University of the Fine Arts in West Berlin. As a freelance artist he created sculptures for public spaces. He was awarded the Georg Kolbe Prize and several scholarships at the Villa Romana in Florence. Krause died in Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate) in 2019.
Annette Krisper-Bešlić was born in 1949 in Leipzig. From 1967 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, graduating in 1972. Until 1996 she worked under the name Annette Peuker-Krisper. From 1981 to 2014 she taught at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Arts in Halle (Saale), and from 1994 as professor of visual arts foundation studies, painting and graphic art. Krisper-Bešlić lives and works in Leipzig.