Karl Oenike

Life & Legacy

Karl Oenike (April 9, 1862 – April 11, 1924) was a German landscape painter. He participated in various scientific expeditions in South America during the years 1887–1891 as painter and photographer. He wrote detailed diaries and made drawings, sketches, watercolors, oil paintings and photos during these expeditions, which give a valuable perspective of remote regions and populations, and of the difficulties encountered by German explorers in the 1880s. Few artists in the exotic art genre have depicted better the "magic of the forest" in his paintings.