Clement Haupers was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1900. In 1918, he began taking courses at the Minneapolis School of Art and joined the Art League of St. Paul, organized by the artist Clara Mairs. Haupers and Mairs started an unconventional relationship, which lasted until her death in 1963. For more than forty years they traveled, exhibited, and lived together as life partners. Haupers died on December 1, 1982, three months after his last solo exhibition.