Klaus Fußmann is considered one of the most important representatives of contemporary figurative painting. He studied at the art academies in Essen and Berlin from 1957 to 1966. From 1974 to 2005, Fußmann held a professorship at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, where he was the teacher of Yadegar Asisi, Ilja Heinig, Christopher Lehmpfuhl and Hermann Reimer, among others. Since 1989, Fußmann has been a member of the FreieAkademie der Künste in Hamburg and was a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund. He lives and works in Gelting on the Baltic Sea and in Berlin. Among other venues, Fußmann exhibited his work at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1972, at the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt in 1982, at the Kunsthalle Emden in 1988, at the Kunsthalle Bremen in 1992 and at the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund in 2003. On his 70th and 80th birthdays, he was exhibited at the State Museum of Art and Cultural History at Gottorf Castle, the Free Academy of Arts in Hamburg, the Mannheim Kunstverein and most recently at the Museum Barbarini in Potsdam. His work has received several awards, such as the Villa Romana Florence Prize and the Böttcherstraße Art Prize in Bremen in 1972, the Art Prize of the City of Darmstadt in 1979, the Order of Merit of the State of Schleswig-Hohlstein in 2011, and the Art Prize of the Ike and Berthold Roland Foundation in 2015.