The painter, graphic artist and sculptor Horst Antes (* 1936) has been in the art world for over half a century and, as a co-founder of new figurative painting, has had a prominent place in German art since the 1960s. He has been known to many since then for his "Kopffüßler" (cephalopods). Since the 1980s, he has mainly painted abstract houses divided into separate abstract surfaces without a central perspective, in small and even expansive large formats. For him, the house is a "figure", consisting of finely painted surfaces and colours composed with material in an alchemical approach.

Horst Antes was born in 1936 in Heppenheim and studied painting with HAP Grieshaber at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe. There, he himself held a professorship for painting from 1984 to 2000. Antes was a participant in the documenta III, IV and the XXXIII Venice Biennale. He has exhibited in numerous institutions throughout Germany and internationally throughout his artistic career. Recently (2022), the art museum Bremen dedicated an extensive individual presentation to his graphic work. Amidst a retrospective in the Berlin Martin-Gropius-Bau (2013), the Franz Marc Museum in Kochel am See hosted an extensive individual exhibition on his 85th birthday. In 1991 the artist received the Grand Prix of the Sao Paulo Biennale.