Konrad Peter Cornelius Klapheck was born in Düsseldorf on February 10, 1935, both his mother and father teach art history at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, which is where Klapheck begins his studies in 1954, Bruno Goiller is his teacher, he visits Max Ernst the same year. He makes the detailled painting of an isolated typewriter in 1955. He and his later wife Lilo Lang spend the winter of 1956/57 in Paris. He applies at the École des Beaux-Arts, however, he is rejected. Klapheck meets the painter and sculptor Christian d'Orgeix in Paris, which is the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.
Klapheck has his first one-man show in The Düsseldorf gallery Schmela in 1959. A year later he has his first international one-man show in the Galleria Schwarz in Milan. Klapheck is introduced to the Paris circle of surrealist by the art critic José Pierre in 1961. In 1965 André Breton writes an introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition in the gallery Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. He also participates in the last important Surrealism exhibition in the Paris gallery L'Oeil in 1965. The Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover shows the first retrospective in 1966.
The painting style Photorealism or Hyperealism originates in the USA and in Europe in the 1970s. Konrad Klapheck's works are Shown in some exhibitions, such as the exhibition "Ekstrem Realism" in the Louisiana Museum Humblebaek in 1973 as well as in the "Hyperréalistes américains - Réalistes européens" in the Centre National d'Art Contemporain in Paris in 1974.
As of 1976, Konrad Klapheck turns to etching. He is appointed professor for painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1976. A second large retrospective is shown in Hamburg, Thübingen and Munich in 1985. The artist begins making full figure portraits of his friends, colleagues and others from the art scene as of 1992. An exhibition is shown at the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1994, an occasion for Klapheck to give two lectures titled "Die Maschine und ich" (The Machine and Me) as well as "Krieg und Frieden - deutsche Kunst nach 1945" (War and Peace - German Art after 1945). In 1997 he turns to nude drawing and thus abandons his main motifs object and machine.