Inger Sitter was born in Trondheim in 1929, but was partly raised in Antwerp in Belgium. At just 16 years old, she joined the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. Here she studied under Per Krohg, Axel Revold and Jean Heiberg. In the period 1946-50 she studied at the Institute Supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp, interrupted by a study at André Lothe in Paris in 1948. In the same autumn she filled her 19th birthday and debuted both at the autumn exhibition and with her first solo exhibition in Oslo Kunstforening. Sitter is one of the most significant Norwegian visual artists in the second half of the 20th century. She played a central role in the breakthrough for the so-called lyrical (natural-based) abstraction in Norwegian art in the 1950s. At the same time, she was strongly socially engaged in work to improve the artists' reputation and she was the first female professor at the Norwegian Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo from 1981 to 1984. At numerous exhibitions of paintings and graphics, both separately and in groups at home and abroad, Sitter has varied her expression set while retaining the basic form of expression inspired by the nature she has been surrounded by.