Horst Antes was born on 28 October 1936 in Heppenheim an der Bergstraße. From 1957 to 1959 he studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe under HAP Grieshaber. At the age of 23, the young artist was awarded the Prize of the Hanoverian Economy (Pankofer Prize, Baden Baden). In 1960 he received a scholarship from the Kulturkreis im Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, Cologne. He creates his first head painting in profile, "Kopf mit roter Kappe" (Head with red cap). Horst Antes was awarded the art prize "Junger Westen" and the "Prix des artistes" at the II Biennale des "juenes artistes", Paris in 1961. In that year he married Dorothée Großmann. He then lived and worked for a year in Florence with a scholarship from the Villa Romana. He then went to Rome for a year to the Villa Massimo. From 1965 to 1968 Horst Antes taught at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe (1967-68 as a visiting professor). In 1966 he took part in the XXXIII Venice Biennale for the second time, received the Unesco Prize for Painting and the second scholarship of the Aldegrever Society, Münster. Horst Antes' interest in indigenous peoples first took him to various Indian reservations in the USA in 1972. The Falklands War in 1982 shocked the artist deeply and led to a change in his subjects: the "head figure" disappeared from the pictorial work and the first house paintings were created.
