Nina Pettinato was born on a cool April night in 1975 in Oettingen, Bavaria, a small, rural town on the northern edge of the Ries meteorite crater. Her father's cultural roots lie in Calabria (southern Italy), while her mother's family originally came from Middle Franconia. She felt drawn to painting and drawing from an early age and won her first art competitions. From 1985, she attended the Albrecht-Ernst-Gymnasium and in the following years developed a strong interest in European cinema, the history of photography, and the graffiti scene. Television broadcasts the now iconic images of the 1980s: the battles in Hamburg's Hafenstraße, the Live Aid benefit concert in London, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and finally the historic upheaval of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Already during her school years, she begins to explore approaches that attempt to explain human experience, behavior, and thought.

After graduating from high school, Nina Pettinato initially chose to study biology at the University of Heidelberg, acquiring knowledge of scientific methodology and systematics with great interest. Nevertheless, her desire to broaden her horizons through additional fields of knowledge grew. Finally, she fulfilled her childhood dream and applied to the Offenbach University of Art and Design, and was accepted. She explored the media of painting, drawing, and photography and, in addition to her work as a research assistant in the library and in the art history department, was active in the student parliament. Her theoretical diploma thesis focused on neuropsychoanalysis, a relatively new discipline that seeks to link neuroscientific and psychoanalytic findings. She successfully completed her studies in 2008 with a diploma in fine arts.

After her diploma, Nina Pettinato gained the attention of art professionals with her first exhibitions both in Germany and abroad. The awarding of the 'Kunstpreis des Bezirks Schwaben' in 2009 supported her application to participate in the postgraduate program of the 'International Studio and Curatorial Program ISCP New York'. During her several-month stay in New York in the summer of 2010, she realized a photography project and lived at the PointB Artist Residency in Williamsburg / Brooklyn. With the intention of further developing her artistic work in a stable location, she decided upon her return from the USA to rent a studio in the countryside. Since then, she has lived and worked in Oettingen and Munich.

Starting in 2014, Nina Pettinato took over the conception and management of the art space 'BNKR – current reflections on art and architecture' in the Ungererstraße high-rise bunker in Munich / North Schwabing. Through the diverse annual programs of regularly appointed curators, a seemingly hermetic World War II bunker was transformed over eight years into a place for artistic practice and cultural participation, addressing current issues at the intersection of art and architecture. For her innovative work as a cultural manager, Nina Pettinato received an award from the Deutscher Kulturrat and participated in the 'Mentoringprogramm für Frauen in Kultur und Medien' in Berlin from 2022 to 2024.

After many years of supporting projects by artists and cultural professionals, and the resulting hiatus from her own exhibitions, Nina Pettinato is now fully dedicating herself to the professional development of her artistic work. In addition to continuing her series of paintings in her studio in Oettingen, she has been working as an advisor to the president of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich since October 2024.