He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School and went to University of Cincinnati. In 1953, he attended evening classes at The Art Academy of Cincinnati taught by the influential instructor, Paul Chidlaw. Dine received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957.

Dine was married to Nancy Dine, a filmmaker, whose documentary about her husband earned her an Academy Award nomination. They were married in the 1950s and moved to New York City in 1958. Nancy Dine died in September 2020.

He first earned respect in the art world with his Happenings. Pioneered with artists Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow, in conjunction with musician John Cage, the “Happenings” were chaotic performance art that was a stark contrast with the more somber mood of the expressionists popular in the New York art world. The first of these was the 30-second The Smiling Worker performed in 1959.

In 1962 Dine’s work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Dowd, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Edward Ruscha, and Wayne Thiebaud, in the historically important and ground-breaking New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps at the Norton Simon Museum. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first “Pop Art” exhibitions in America. These painters started a movement, in a time of social unrest, which shocked America and the art world. The Pop Art movement fundamentally altered the nature of modern art.

In the early 1960s, he began attaching objects, particularly tools of autobiographical significance, to his canvases. Job #1 from 1962, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, which incorporates paint cans, paint brushes, a screwdriver, and a piece of wood is an example of such a pop art work. These provided commercial as well as critical success, but left Dine unsatisfied. In September 1966 police raided an exhibition of his work displayed at Robert Fraser’s gallery in London, England. Twenty of his works were seized and Fraser was charged under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, Dine’s work was found to be indecent but not obscene and Fraser was fined 20 guineas. The following year Dine moved to London and continued to be represented by Fraser, spending the next four years developing his art.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts purchased six works by Dine, and in 1983 he was a juror in “The Next Juried Show” at the VMFA, judging prints and drawings. The juried shows at the VMFA were a series of biennial exhibitions covering all areas including Communication Arts, Craft Media, Painting & Sculpture, Photography, Video Arts, and Prints and Drawings, each on an every-other-year schedule. “The Next Juried Show” was the last of the series, however.

In 1984 the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, exhibited his work as “Jim Dine: Five Themes”. 1987 saw the publication of the book Jim Dine: Drawings 1973 – 1987, to coincide with a touring exhibition. In 1989 the Minneapolis Institute of Art hosted Jim Dine Drawings: 1973–1987. In 1983, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994.

In 2004 the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. organized the exhibition “Drawings of Jim Dine.” In the summer of 2007 he participated in the Chicago public art exhibition “Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet.” In Canada, he first exhibited at the Galerie de Bellefeuille alongside artists Chuck Close, Tom Hopkins and Jennifer Hornyak in 2009. Dine also exhibited regularly with the Alan Cristea Gallery in London and had a show there in April 2010.

Located at Washington State University in the city of Pullman, Washington, The Technicolor Heart (The Big One) is a 12 foot tall silicon bronze sculpture painted with oil enamel in the shape of a heart. It is one of 31 pieces of art on display on WSU’s campus. This statue, inspired by his earliest memories of work, is painted blue and is covered in hand tools. After the Virginia Tech shooting (April 16, 2007), the artwork was surrounded by small white hearts that were placed by Washington State University students as a spontaneous memorial to that tragic event. The Technicolor Heart was acquired in 2004 for $391,440 by the Washington State Arts Commission, which is a state government agency established in 1961, for the State Art Collection.

On May 16, 2008, Jim Dine formally presented a nine-meter-high bronze statue depicting a walking Pinocchio, named Walking to Borås to the city of Borås, Sweden.