Axel Lind was born on 1 August 1907 in Copenhagen. He initially wanted to become an opera singer but worked for many years as a journalist. Axel Lind participated in the Finnish Winter War as an ambulance driver, where he also sang for the soldiers and reported on the war for the newspaper Politiken in Copenhagen.

In the early 1950s, Axel Lind completely changed his career. He became an artist, focusing on marine motifs in all their forms. Axel Lind later settled in Sweden and lived for nearly 30 years in the famous "Villa Lindarna" in Hovås outside Gothenburg.

As an artist, Axel Lind received several awards and is today represented in Nordic museums and public collections. During the artist's lifetime, Axel Lind also held exhibitions in, among others, Vancouver, Quebec, Seattle, Brisbane, and Sydney.

About a hundred years after the breakthrough of the Skagen painters such as P.S. Krøyer and Michael Ancher, Axel Lind joined the contemporary Skagen painters in the late 1970s. Axel Lind was the initiator and founder of the Grenen Kunstmuseum in Skagen in 1977. The museum has since become a popular destination, attracting tens of thousands of visitors. Grenen Kunstmuseum is currently led by Axel Lind's widow, Kirsten Lind.