Ants Murakin was born on January 8, 1892 in Mulgimaa in southern Estonia. He was an artist, specializing in landscape painting. His interest in nature and his observations of natural phenomena contributed to his success as a painter of southern Estonian landscapes.

Already at the age of 14, in 1906, Ants Murakin began his art studies at the Tartu Art School. During his four years at the Tartu Art School, Ants Murakin, in addition to nature and painting, developed his third passion – language and literature. Murakin was accepted as a member of the literary group Noor-Eesti in 1912.

At the age of 21, Ants Murakin was drafted into the Russian army in 1913 and placed with the Grodno Hussars Regiment in Warsaw. In 1914, Murakin became a prisoner of war in Galicia, Spain and was sent to a prison camp in Hungary. Since he spoke German, he became a camp interpreter. It was soon discovered that he was an artist, and he was given his own place to set up an artist's studio.

Ants Murakin later lived in Budapest, where he had a spacious art studio. In Hungary, Murakin studied mostly with older artists from the old school, as the younger ones were on the front lines creating war paintings and drawings.
Before returning to his homeland, the artist visited an art exhibition of works confiscated from noblemen in Budapest, which made a deep impression on him. The exhibition featured French impressionists and cubists, as well as masters such as Eugène Delacroix, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne.

In 1920, Ants Murakin returned home to Mulgimaa in southern Estonia. After marrying in 1932, Murakin moved to Tallinn, where he worked as an artist and also as an art critic. During World War II, in 1944, he fled to Sweden, where he settled in Norrköping. He became a Swedish citizen in 1959.

In Sweden, Ants Murakin has participated in the exhibitions Estonian and Latvian art at Liljevalchs in Stockholm and with the exhibition Baltic art at Värmlands Museum in Karlstad. Together with Otto Paas and Arno Vihaleemm, he exhibited at, among others, Norrköpings Konstmuseum 1945 and at Karlskoga Konsthall. Ants Murakin is also represented at Tallinn Museum and Tartu Museum.

Murakin was influenced by the Estonian artist Konrad Mägi (1878-1925) in the application of paint on canvas, and he was also inspired by Nikolai Triik (1884-1940), Paul Burman (1888-1934) and Jaan Koort (1883-1935)