Thomas Hartmann was born in Zetel in 1950. He studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen from 1974 to 1979 under Karl Heinrich Greune. In 1979, he worked with a scholarship at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and in 1984/1985 at Villa Massimo in Rome. In 1994, he held a guest professorship at the Pentiment Summer Academy of the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg. In 1998, he stayed at the Künstlerhaus Leschwitz near Görlitz. In 1999, he had a teaching assignment at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald. From 2005 to 2018, he was a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. Thomas Hartmann is a member of the German Artists Association. He lives and works in Berlin.