Benno Schmidbaur was born in Augsburg, Germany and went to a classical gymnasium with a focus on ancient Greek and Latin. He went on to study Egyptology and Assyriology in Munich and West Berlin. In Berlin, he began working with the sculptor Wolf Henri in a 17th century forge, now a museum. He moved to New York in 1978 and quickly established himself with a large retrospective of his Berlin sculpture at Goethe House New York simultaneously with a solo exhibition with Bodley Gallery.

He moved to Saugerties in 1980.