Rainer Fetting was born in Wilhelmshaven (Lower Saxony) in 1949. He studied painting at the University of the Fine Arts, West Berlin, under Hans Jaenisch from 1972 to 1978. In 1977 he co-founded the Galerie am Moritzplatz. In 1978 a DAAD scholarship took him to New York. Fetting received international attention in 1981 in the show A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy, London, and a year later in the Berlin exhibition Zeitgeist. In 2005 he was awarded the Henri Nannen Prize. His first retrospective was shown at the Berlinische Galerie in 2011. In 2020, the Museum Schloss Gottorf presented his extensive work. Fetting lives and works in Berlin and Westerland (Sylt).