Karl Oenike (1862–1924)[1] was a German landscape painter, who participated in various scientific expeditions in South America during the years 1887-1891 as painter and photographer. He wrote detailed diaries, made topographical maps, drawings, sketches, watercolors, oil paintings and photos during these expeditions, which give a valuable perspective of remote regions and populations, and of the difficulties encountered by German explorers in the 1880s. Few artists in the exotic art genre have depicted better the “magic of the forest” in his paintings.

Karl Oenike was born in Berlin on April 9, 1862. He studied art in the Berliner Kunstakademie from 1879 to 1886 under Prof. Eugen Bracht de:Eugen Bracht, who was a highly res...