Claude van Lingen was born in South Africa and moved to New York in 1978. He settled in Austin,Texas in 2006. Claude studied at the Johannesburg College of Art (University of Johannesburg), the Academie Notre Dames des Champs, Paris, and gained an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, in 1980.
Claude exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial in 1975 and in 1973 was awarded the prestigious Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Award at the Art South Africa Today exhibition. Since coming to the United States his work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York, and other cities in the USA. Canada and South Africa. Claude’s work is in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin Texas, MUDAC, Lausanne, Switzerland and almost every museum in South Africa.
Since 1978 he has explored the theme, 1000 Years from Now. Drawings and paintings in which dates for 1000 years into the future and names from lists—written one on top of the other—have formed the core of his work since 1991. This approach has been applied to the writing of names in drawings such as 1000 Years from Now,The Victims of the World Trade Center Tragedy,1000 Years from Now, The Casualties of the Iraq War, and 1000 Years from Now, The Casualties of the Afghanistan War.
Claude was chairman of the Teacher Training Department and the Fine Art Department at the Johannesburg College of Art, South Africa, from 1965-1978, he taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, from 1982-1985 and is currently an adjunct professor at Austin Community College.
He is writing a book tiled Art, Creativity, Style and Controversy. See the blog site www.artcreativitycontroversy.com for an excerpt and to leave a comment.
I Am Right, You Are Wrong 37" x 25" Graphite on paper. 2010 Collection Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas Gift of the Artist