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.