Söntke Campen was born in 1991 in Geldern on the Lower Rhine and grew up in East Frisia on the North Sea. After training as a graphic designer and travelling for several years, he studied illustration at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, specialising in painting under Prof. Christian Hahn and Prof. Henning Kles.

With the outbreak of the corona pandemic and the closure of the university studios, he finished his studies and moved to Leipzig, where he founded the artist collective Horror Vacuii and has curated around 25 exhibitions since 2020. 

In 2020 he received the Bargheer Award, a scholarship from the Bargheer Foundation and a major exhibition at the Bargheer Museum in Hamburg. In 2022 he received the Elyssee Prize for Young Painting in Northern Germany. In June 2023, the Dresden Residenzschloss, the A. R. Penck-Kunsthalle and the Holger John Gallery organised the artist’s largest exhibition to date.