Tilopa Monk was born as Rudiger Frank on September 13, 1949 in Unterlüss-Lutterloh, in the Lower Saxony region of Germany. He began his art studies in 1969 at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf where he studied with Joseph Beuys. In 1973 he studied with Mac Zimmerman at the Munich Academy of Arts.

Between 1979 tand 1982 he traveled and lived in various countries including India, Ceylon and Thailand and became fascinated with Far Eastern religion. In 1984 he changed his name from Rüdiger Frank to Tilopâ Monk, naming himself after the Tantric and mahasiddha 11^th century Tibetan monk Tilopa (988-1069). Monk lived in Munich, Germany, where he had a studio and ran a printing workshop.

Works by Tilopâ Monk are or have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries at home and abroad, including the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany; the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nurenberg, Germany; Galerie Lometsch in Kassel, Germany and the Goethe Institute in Kuala Lumpur, Malayasia.

Tilopa Monk (Rudiger Frank) died on June 23, 2010 in Wuppertal, Germany, near Dusseldorf.