Claude Flight was born in London and worked variously as a librarian, farmer and beekeeper, before deciding to enroll at the Heatherly School of Fine Art in 1912 at the age of thirty-one. During the First World War, he served as a captain in the Army Service Corps in France and he spent a year in Paris when he was demobilized where he purchased a Neolithic cave by the Seine, sixty miles from the city, which became his regular summer retreat. In 1922 he met Edith Lawrence, who was to become his lifelong companion and artistic partner. Together, they established an interior design business from their studio in London. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1921, in Paris in 1922 and at the R.B.A. in London from 1923. He was a member of the Seven and Five Society, the Grubb Group and he taught at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art.

Flight is now mostly associated with his work using the linocut technique. Inspired by the Futurists, he maintained the linocut was the ideal medium to express the artistic needs of the modern age, as it was not trapped by any associated tradition. He wrote several books on the linocut technique, illustrated with examples of his linocut prints. He also organised the first exhibition devoted to the linocut in Britain, at the Redfern Gallery in London. Its success led to eight further annual linocut exhibitions organised by him.

Under the influence of Futurism, and that of Cubism and Vorticism, Flight’s work expresses rhythm through bold, simple forms and shows his interest in depicting speed, movement and dynamism.