Karl Dempwolf was born not far from the North Sea in 1939, in the state of lower Saxony, in the city of Delmenhorst, Germany. Dempwolf spent his childhood years in Bavaria before immigrating to the United States on the S.S. America in 1954. He attended schools in Los Angeles County's San Fernando Valley, graduating from Cal State Northridge in 1964 with a B.A. Dempwolf has the distinctive honor of being the first All American athlete at this institution. He continued his education at the Art Center in Los Angeles, and received his Graduate degree from USC in 1974.

The American Arts and Crafts movement has been a major inspiration for Dempwolf. The movement professed the idea that Art give the viewer a much needed spiritual lift. Honoring this innate power to elevate, every painting merited a handcrafted gilded frame. This is a tradition that Dempwolf has followed as a fitting completion for many of his own paintings. Many artists of the Arts and Crafts era have played a part in shaping Dempwolf's love for the western landscape, as he notes in his Artist Statement. However, it was the work of the Founding Member of the California Art Club - William Wendt that has influenced and inspired Dempwolf most of all. Dempwolf and many other Artists regard Wendt, who ironically was also a fellow immigrant, as the Dean of the American West's Plein-air Painters.


The stunning works of art Dempwolf creates are initially Plein Air compositions. Either completed at a quiet sitting, or painstakingly worked to perfection over hours in his private studio, each and every painting demonstrates a fine balance of California Impressionism blended with the Artist's own unique style of Expressionism. This creative mastery, infused with a passion for painting once expressed by past great Artists such as Payne, Wendt, Rose, and others, has forged a new Movement in today's Fine Art World. We call this movement "California Expressionism."