Bernard Zakheim was born in 1898 to a Jewish family in Poland. He dreamed of becoming an artist from a young age, and was awarded a scholarship to the Polish National Academy of Fine Art where he studied drawing, painting, and sculpting. In 1920, Zakheim and his wife moved to San Francisco, California, where he worked as a furniture maker.

Zakheim also became involved in artistic endeavours in the early 1930s, and was especially interested in depicting and preserving Jewish-American life and culture through his art. He met muralist Diego Rivera around this time, and studied with him and San Francisco muralist Victor Arnautoff to develop his skills in mural painting.

In 1933 he helped found the San Francisco Artists and Writers Union, which was a group of activist artists that lobbied the federal government to create a federally funded arts program during the Great Depression. These efforts led to the establishment of the Public Works of Art Project, which helped fund some of Zakheim’s most well-known works, including the Coit Tower murals in San Francisco.

Zakheim was also known for embedding his own politics into his work, and advocated that artists should openly show their beliefs in their work. Frank Herbert’s biographer stated Zakheim’s views in this area were influential on Herbert as well, whom Zakheim encouraged to include political and religious messages in his books.

During his career, Zakheim created murals for the University of California San Francisco, the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, and the Alemany Hospital in San Francisco. Later in life he moved out of the city to Sebastopol, California, where he continued to paint. He passed away in 1985.