Karl Yens

Karl Yens was born in Altona, Germany in 1868. He studied with the German genre painter Max Koch in Berlin and later with Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens at the Academie Julian in Paris.

After settling in Southern California circa 1910, Yens exhibited and won a medal in the impressive (though little remembered or documented) Pan California International Exposition, held in San Diego’s Balboa Park in 1915. He continued to show widely in Southern California: at the California Art Club in 1919, the Laguna Beach Art Association throughout the 1920s, and again in 1935, at the Los Angeles Painters and Sculptors Club in 1922 and 1928, as well as through many other venues.

An illustrator, engraver, fresco, portrait and still life painter, Karl Yens became a member of the American Federation of the Arts and made a notable contribution to Southern California’s art community.