Karl Weschke arrived in England as a teenage prisoner of war; in 1955, he moved to Cornwall. Initially settling in Zennor near St Ives, then later moving to Cape Cornwall where he lived until his death in 2005. Though he never wished to be part of the St Ives arts scene, nevertheless he had many good friends in Cornwall including artists Francis Bacon (who lived there in 1959/60), Bryan Wynter, Terry Frost and Roger Hilton, and writers W.S. Graham and John le Carré.

During the 1950s and 1960s, exhibitions at the Grosvenor, Whitechapel, Tate and Arnolfini were followed by a series of exhibitions at London’s Redfern Gallery. In the 1990s, he gained greater public recognition with the purchase of a further three of his works by the Tate following its earlier acquisition of Body on the Beach (1977). An extended display of his work then followed at Tate Britain in 1996. In 2001 a retrospective of his work was held in his birthplace Gera (Germany), with a further retrospective at Tate St Ives in 2004.

“Weschke can be seen as one of the last post-war British artists of any magnitude… His evocations of the immensity of nature, its raw power, can verge on the apocalyptic, he is good at identifying man’s fear of the landscape – of the unknown, or at any rate the little understood. He is painting what it feels like to be in the landscape, not some picturesque distanced vista of it. Honesty was important to him.”
Andrew Lambirth

“Weschke acquired a unique voice remarkably early. By the 1960s no one was making paintings quite like his… they certainly had nothing to do with the so-called St Ives School. They seemed to be the works of a permanent outsider, an Einzelgänger, who retreated to the bitter end of England in order to live in a world of his own in a cottage so far off the beaten track that it was, without detailed instructions, almost impossible to find.”
Frank Whitford

• 2025  Karl Weschke: Centenary, The Levinsky Gallery, University of Plymouth, England
• 2025  Karl Weschke: Stadtmuseum Gera, Germany
• 2025  Karl Weschke: Painting order out of chaos, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin
• 2016  Karl Weschke 1925-2005, Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, England
• 2012  St Ives: A Middle Generation, Beaux Arts Gallery, London, England
• 2004  Karl Weschke – Beneath a Black Sky, Tate St Ives, Cornwall, England
• 2002  International Artists, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
• 2001  Painting Retrospective, Kunstsammlung, Gera, Germany
• 2001  Drawings Retrospective, Kunstverein, Gera, Germany
• 2000  Order and Event – Landscape Now, Art Space Gallery, London, England
• 1998  Artists & St Ives, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
• 1996/7 Extended Display (six paintings), Tate Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall, England
• 1995  Newlyn Art Gallery Centennial Exhibition, Penzance, England
• 1992  Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow, Scotland
• 1991  Kennedy Gallery, Ontario, Canada
• 1987 Redfern Gallery, London, England
• 1985 St Ives 1939-64, Tate Gallery, London, England
• 1983  ‘8 in the 80s’, Soho Building, New York, USA
  1980  Karl Weschke Paintings & Drawings since 1974, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, England
• 1977  Englische Kunst der Gegenwart, Palais Thurn und Taxis, Austria
• 1974  Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance
• 1973  Falmouth College of Art, England
• 1971/2  Compass Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland
• 1971/2 Karl Weschke Paintings, City Art Gallery, Plymouth, England
• 1970 Karl Weschke, Lancaster University, England
• 1969 Exe Gallery, Exeter, England
• 1964 Karl Weschke, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, England
• 1963  British Painting in the Sixties, Tate Gallery, London
• 1960  Karl Weschke Paintings & Drawings, Matthiesen Gallery, London
• 1959  Weschke, Woodstock Gallery, London
• 1958  Karl Weschke, New Vision Centre Gallery, London