Werner Stötzer was born in 1931 in Sonneberg (Thuringia). In 1948 he began his studies in Weimar and continued from 1951 to 1953 at the Academy of Art in Dresden. From 1954 to 1958 he was a master student at the German Academy of Arts, East Berlin, under Gustav Seitz. From 1987 to 1990 he taught there as a professor. In addition to the Will Lammert Prize, the Käthe Kollwitz Prize of the Academy of Arts of the GDR and the National Prize of the GDR, in 2008 he received the Brandenburg Art Prize for his life’s work. Stötzer died in 2010 in the Oderbruch (Brandenburg).