Eberhard Schlotter was born on June 3, 1921, in Hildesheim. Eberhard was introduced to art by his father, the sculptor Heinrich Schlotter. As a student, Schlotter was considered a talented drawer and painter. Schlotter attended the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich beginning in 1939. After being sent to the Eastern front to fight on the vanguard, Schlotter was severely wounded in 1944 and later became a prisoner of the Americans. In 1945, Schlotter moved to Darmstadt to work as a freelance artist. Schlotter took his first trip to Spain in 1952. The artist sat as chair of the New Darmstadt Secession from 1955 until 1957. Schlotter and his wife moved to the fishing village of Altea, Spain in November of 1956. There he painted his cycle "Eine Großfamilie" ("An Extended Family"), an allegory of dishonesty and insincerity. He took a teaching position as the Hamburg College for Visual Arts in 1967. Schlotter was appointed professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz in 1980. He took over as guest professor at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Columbia in 1986. Since 1995, Eberhard Schlotter has lived and worked in Wienhausen.