A native of Heidelberg, Germany, Rolf Stoll studied at art academies in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart before immigrating to the United States. He briefly attended the Art Students League in New York, then settled in Cleveland in the 1920s. In 1926 he began teaching portrait painting at the Cleveland School of Art, where he had a solo show the following year. In the mid-1930s, Stoll received federal commissions to paint murals for the Board of Education Building in Cleveland and the post office in East Palestine, Ohio. He exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1925–54). From the 1930s through the 1950s his paintings were featured in group exhibitions in Cleveland, at the Butler Art Institute in Youngstown, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Carnegie Institute of Art in Pittsburgh. Stoll retired from teaching in 1957.
"Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 239