Born in Stettin, Mac Zimmermann began to study at the Szczecin factory school for formative work in 1930, after having taken drawing classes. In 1934, he moved to Hamburg, where he worked as a set designer, illustrator and draftsman. In 1939, he went to Berlin, where he was excluded from the Reich Chamber of Culture in 1943.

After the war, he had his first major exhibition at Galerie Rosen in Berlin in 1946. In 1950, he participated in the reestablishment of the Deutsche Künstlerbund, which had been dissolved in 1936, along with Karl Hofer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl Hartung, Willi Baumeister, and others.

From 1958, he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, and starting in 1964, he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He has exhibited his work at the Venice Biennale and the Documenta in Kassel, amongst others. Zimmermann's estate was handed over to the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald by the widow in 2010. (fea)

Mac Zimmermann's "drawing is clear, the composition of the picture is strict, and nothing in the scenes that he offers our contemplation hurts our sense of what is possible. In his painting, Mac Zimmermann interweaves the irrational and the mystical to create fantastic images. - The edges of the picture with isolated retouching and small color losses.

Studied with Gregor Rosenbauer at the Werkschule für creative work, represented in various surrealist exhibitions and collections, from 1958 professorships at the universities of fine arts in Berlin and Munich