Karl Hagedorn was born in Berlin, Germany in 1889 and came to England in 1905 to study textile production and fine art at the Manchester School of Art and later at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. After a study trip to Paris in 1912–13, which exposed him to contemporary Cubist and Futurist influences, Hagedorn returned to England, keen to introduce the modernism of his 'rhythmical expressions in line and colour' to the Manchester art scene and beyond. A gifted painter and water-colourist, Hagedorn exhibited widely throughout his life, while also contributing prolifically to the fields of commercial and textile design.
Painter and commercial designer Karl Hagedorn was born in Berlin, Germany in 1889 and grew up in Freiburg im Breisgau. He came to Manchester in 1905 to study textile production and attended both the Manchester School of Technology and the Manchester School of Art; at the latter he studied under the French Impressionist painter Pierre Adolphe Valette (1876–1942). He later enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and befriended the future Slade Professor Randolph Schwabe (1885–1948). In 1912–13 Hagedorn lived in Paris, studied with Maurice Denis and was exposed to the Cubist and Futurist influences of Picasso, Severini, and, in particular, Matisse, whom he met in 1912. This encounter was a defining moment for him, and he kept the remains of a cigarette Matisse had given him until the end of his life (Llewellyn & Liss, 2019, p. 23). Upon his return to England, Hagedorn made a pioneering attempt to introduce Modernism to the Manchester art scene. His 'rhythmical expressions in line and colour' (Pallant House Gallery website), as he called them, were first exhibited with the Society of Modern Painters in Manchester in 1913, with one of the reviewers describing them as: 'Arcs and triangles of colour spread on the canvas with a free hand, they bear no resemblance to the visual appearance of any object; but as they are not intended to do so it is perhaps unfair to criticise Mr Hagedorn on that account. They will certainly 'keep people guessing' (Llewellyn & Liss).
Hagedorn was naturalised in 1914 and served as a Lance-corporal in the Middlesex Regiment during the First World War (1916–19). After the war, Hagedorn retreated from his modernist approach and returned to a more sober, representational style. Throughout the mid-1910s–1920s he regularly exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In 1927 he moved from Manchester to London, where he continued to exhibit widely, including at the Royal Academy of Arts and with the Allied Artists' Association (AAA) and the Fine Art Society (FAS). He was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1935 (where he later served as honorary treasurer), the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Manchester Academy, the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the New English Art Club, and the New Society (later known as the United Society of Artists). The same year he also received the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition of Decorative Art in Paris. Hagedorn made an equally prolific contribution as a commercial designer, creating advertisements for the Empire Marketing Board, Shell, and the Radio Times, among others. He was also known for his textile designs, employed as the official designer for Printed Cotton Goods for the West, East and South African trade in 1916–33. This work was highlighted by an anonymous author in Hagedorn’s obituary in The Times, which described him as 'one of the designers who helped greatly to raise the artistic level of the textile trade in its efforts to meet the foreign competition. His cotton print designs, large in the scale of patterns and darkly rich in colour, were addressed to the native taste, but were eagerly acquired by artists in this country for the decoration of their rooms or for backgrounds in their pictures' (The Times, 1 April 1969, p. 10). During the Second World War, Hagedorn produced a number of watercolours for the Recording Britain scheme launched by the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime to record the home front in Britain (now in the V&A and the Government Art collections). Hagedorn also taught part-time at the Epsom School of Art (1947–60). In his later years, he lived in Lower Feltham, Middlesex and in London.
Karl Hagedorn died in London in 1969. The posthumous exhibition, First Modernist: Karl Hagedorn 1889–1969, was held at The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, in association with the Chris Beetles Gallery in London (1994-95), followed by Karl Hagedorn: Rhythmical Expressions at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2018–19), in collaboration with Liss Llewellyn Fine Art. Hagedorn's work is in public collections including the Government Art Collection, Manchester Art Gallery, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, the V&A, the Wellcome Collection, and the Whitworth.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Karl Hagedorn]
Publications related to [Karl Hagedorn] in the Ben Uri Library