Werner Tübke was born in 1929 in Schönebeck on the Elbe (Saxony-Anhalt). From 1948 to 1949 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, then at the University of Greifswald. He received awards including the Art Prize of the City of Leipzig, the National Prize of the GDR and the Käthe Kollwitz Prize of the Academy of Arts of the GDR. He was appointed professor at the Leipzig Academy in 1972 and was its rector from 1973 to 1976. After this he began work on the monumental circular painting about the Peasant Wars in the Panorama Museum at Bad Frankenhausen (Thuringia). Tübke died in Leipzig in 2004.
The Tübke Foundation was established in Leipzig in 2006.