Sold
Karl Hagedorn
(1889 - 1969)
Village Street
Sold
Karl Hagedorn (1889 - 1969)
Size:
Height – 36cm
Width – 52cm
Trained in Manchester and on the Continent, Hagedorn moved to Buxton around the time of this painting. The carved geodetic forms of Topley Pike, a limestone quarry near Buxton, Derbyshire, lying in- side the Peak District National Park, which would have appealed to Hagedorn’s sense of Modernism. As Simon Martin has remarked, his watercolour landscapes from the 1920’s ‘encapsulate the search for solace in the landscape that appears in the work of so many others of his generation. These works have a distinctive clarity and call to mind Paul Nash’s question of whether it was possible to ‘Go Modern and Be British’. As an outsider, Hagedorn was not weighed down by such a sense of tradition. During the same period, he was also designing eye- catching posters… applying the lessons of European modernism to commercial advertising’.
Painter, born in Berlin, Germany, who moved to England in 1905, later adopting British nationality. He went to Manchester in 1905 to train in textile production and also studied art under Adolphe Valette at the local Manchester School of Art and then at The Slade School of Fine Ar, followied by two yearss in Paris, in 1912-13, when, working under Maurice Denis, he absorbed a range of avant-garde styles. On his return to England, he made a consciously pioneering attempt to introduce Modernism into Manchester through his work as both painter and designer. He became a British subject in 1914 and served as a Lance-Corporal in the Middlesex Regiment during World War I.
He exhibited at the Manchester Society of Modern Painters, RA, RBA, RSMA and with the NEAC. In 1925 he received the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition of Decorative Art, Paris and in 1935 he was elected RBA. He exhibited at a number of leading galleries in London and the provinces, and was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the New English Art Club and the NS. In 1995, the Chris Beetles Gallery hosted ‘Manchester’s First Modernist’, an important retrospective exhibition of the work of Karl Hagedorn organised in conjunction with the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. It was accompanied by an illustrated biographical catalogue. His work is in the collection of the Atkinson Art Gallery, BM, GAC, Manchester City Art Gallery V&A and the Wellcome Library.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
