Rolf Lindemann was born in 1933 in Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt). After an apprenticeship as a decorative painter, from 1951 to 1956 he studied painting at the Weissensee University of the Arts in East Berlin. From 1980 to 1989 he worked as a visiting teacher at the School of Advertising and Design in Berlin-Schöneweide (East Berlin). In 2000 he was awarded the Helen Abbott Prize for Fine Art. The taught at the Volkshochschule in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg from 1991. Lindemann died in 2017.