Axel Hütte was born in 1951 in Essen, Germany. Between 1973 and 1981 he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he attended Bernd Becher's fine art course in photography. In the same year he joined Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff in a rented studio space in a disused power station. In 1982 Hütte won a DAAD scholarship to London. His first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf in 1984. Solo exhibitions followed at the Rotterdamse Kunststichting, Rotterdam(1989), the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (1993) the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn (1995), the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur (1997), and the Foundation for Photography, Amsterdam (2001). Most recently a major retrospective of Hütte's work was held at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, in 2004.