Born in Ludinhausen, Germany, in 1952, Alex Gockel began studying design in 1973 at the Polytechnic School of Münster, Germany, specialising in the area of typography and graphic design.

Since 1981 he has been exploring various artistic techniques, such as etching or screen printing, although he has never abandoned painting. In 1983 he founded Avant Art, a company dedicated to artistic publishing and since then he has participated in a series of international art exhibitions. In 1988 he restored a windmill in order to create a graphic printing centre.

In 2006, the US Olympic Committee commissioned him to create an official art piece for the Olympics in Turin, Italy. In 2009 he painted two of the last existing (unpainted) panels of the Berlin wall to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Germany; the presentation was at the German embassy in Athens as part of the celebrations.

His works are usually composed of depthless planes where he places figures of human and geometric forms filled with colour. The line is used as the primary drawing element and the one that gives vitality to his works. He has exhibited in several cities in the USA and in several countries in Europe and the Far East, making his work part of important private and institutional collections.