Rebecca Horn was born March 24, 1944, in Michelstadt, Germany. As a young girl, Horn read Johann Valentin Andreae’s Die chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosenkreutz and Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus, which cultivated the artist’s interest in alchemy, Surrealist machines, and the absurd. Studying at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1964 to 1970, Horn was inspired by the writings of Franz Kafka and Jean Genet and the films of Luis Buñuel and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The most profound influence on Horn’s development as an artist, however, was a lung condition contracted in 1968 that forced her to stop using certain sculptural materials. A subsequent period of convalescence at a sanatorium inspired a series of sculptures concerned with the body, isolation, and vulnerability. Horn turned to soft materials, reminiscent of bandages and prostheses, and began making her body-extension sculptures.

Living in Hamburg until 1971, Horn worked mainly as a Performance [more] artist, incorporating her body sculptures into actions. After a short stay in London in 1971, she was invited to participate in Documenta in Kassel, where she staged her first large-scale public performance. That same year, she began incorporating feathers in her work and began making mechanical pieces. Moving to West Berlin in 1973, Horn had her first solo exhibition at the Galerie René Block. She also made her first film, Berlin Exercises: Dreaming Under Water, which won the Deutscher Kritiker Preis in 1975. Horn made her first feature-length film in 1978, Der Eintänzer.

In the 1980s, Horn began working with site-specific installations. Collaborating with Jannis Kounellis in 1986 on an installation at the site of an insane asylum in Vienna, Horn became increasingly interested in the history and memory of environment. The artist was awarded the Arnold Bode Preis at Documenta that same year. In the late 1980s, Horn returned to filmmaking as well as continuing her interest in site-specific work. In 1990, she completed the full-length feature film Buster’s Bedroom, starring Donald Sutherland.

In 1992, Horn became the first woman to receive the prestigious Trägerin des Kaiserrings Goslar, and was awarded the Medienkunstpreis Karlsruhe for achievements in technology and art. In 1993, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized a mid-career retrospective, which traveled to the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Tate Gallery and Serpentine Gallery, London; and Musée de Grenoble. Horn presently teaches at the Akademie der Kunst in Berlin.