Emil Cimiotti was born in Göttingen on 19 August, 1927. After being released as POW (prisoner of war), Cimiotti started training as a mason. After 1949 he attended the Kunstakademie Stuttgart where he was taught by Otto Braun. After Stuttgart Cimiotti first went to Berlin, then to Paris where he visited Brancusi, Le Corbusier and Fernand Leger. His works were presented at an exhibition for the first time in 1956, followed by extremely negative critisms by art experts. However, the atmosphere changed when Vellinghausen and Thwaites championed his works. The subsequent year Cimiotti even won the art prize "junger westen 57" for sculpture. This prize was Cimiotti's breakthrough. The sculptor took part in the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958, received a scholarship for Villa Massimo in Rome in 1958 and presented his works at documenta II as well as on exhibitions in Paris and the United States. Emil Cimiotti had become one of the most important sculptors of German Art Informel. In 1963 he was also appointed a founding member of the Kunsthochschule in Braunschweig. In 1966 Cimiotti changed his strategy. Until that time he had worked directly in wax, now he created numerous works with sand-casting. During the same period he made large plastics for the universities of Göttingen, Kiel and Konstanz. In 1972 Emil Cimiotti gave up his new technique and deliberately returned to direct creation in wax. He steadily produced sculptures until 1981 when his family was hit by a serious accident. Cimiotti resumed creating plastics in 1989 after stopping to teach at the Braunschweiger Kunsthochschule and moving to his new studio in Hedwigsburg. The following years were very productive, with highlights like retrospectives in Osnabrück and Recklinghausen and his participation in the exhibition "Europäische Plastik des Informel" in the Wilhelm Lehmbruck-Museum in Duisburg in 1995.