Konrad Knebel was born in 1932 in Leipzig. From 1951 to 1957 he studied painting at the Weissensee University of the Arts in East Berlin, where he was later a teacher. In 1980 he was awarded the National Prize of the GDR, in 1990 the Käthe Kollwitz Prize of the Academy of Arts (Berlin) and in 2009 the Hannah Höch Prize of the State of Berlin, which was linked to a retrospective of the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin. Knebel lives and works in Berlin.