Karl Weschke

German, (active 1925–2005)
With the death of the German-born painter Karl Weschke, at the age of 79, the last link with the St Ives school of artists is broken. Weschke moved to Cornwall in 1955, eventually settling, in 1960, in a small house on Cape Cornwall, overlooking the sea that would form the backdrop for his paintings. He was never a central member of the St Ives school, since his allegiance to abstraction was shortlived, but he was a close friend of Bryan Wynter, Roger Hilton and the poet WS Graham.
Living in England since his days as a prisoner of war, Weschke was always an outsider, only recently adopted by the British establishment and, until the last few years, ignored by his German compatriots, a condition remedied by the award of the German Order of Merit and the keys to his home town Gera, in Thüringen, in 2003.

Throughout his life, he grappled with the question of his identity. Although he never renounced his German citizenship, for many years he would not visit the country. British citizenship was not an option, as he did not feel British.

Weschke was an artist with a sense of tradition, who engaged with myth and history in an unashamedly figurative idiom that had roots in German expressionism, as well as in the artists of the northern and Italian Renaissance. His was not an academic idiom, but one that spoke of humanity and life in a harsh, modern world.

If one adjective could be used to describe his painting it is existential. Fighting dogs, horsemen on the moor, scenes of rape, storms at sea, fire-eaters and drowned corpses exposed to the burning sun are subjects that reveal his engagement with the hardship and cruelty he had experienced. Above all, his paintings were imbued with a sense of empathy for those suffering.

One of three illegitimate children, Weschke was born in Taubenpreskeln, near Gera. His mother abandoned him to an orphanage at the age of two, but was forced to reclaim him five years later, an episode that marked him for life.

Unsurprisingly, given his circumstances, Weschke ended up in the Hitler Youth and, in 1943, joined the military. Captured by the Canadians, he was sent to Britain, where, after being moved from camp to camp, he was sent to Radwinter, an open camp near Cambridge, intended to turn prisoners into democratic citizens. He worked on the camp newspaper, designed theatre sets and attended a course of lectures on art, organised by the Cambridge Unversity extra-mural studies board, which introduced him to his German cultural heritage - that of the expressionists whose paintings had been branded degenerate by the Nazis.

From Radwinter, Weschke graduated to Wilton Park, from where he was allowed out on day release to attend House of Commons debates, under the watchful eye of Tom Driberg MP. He also visited the Royal Academy and the Tate. Through Driberg, he met Alison de Vere, and their friendship blossomed into a marriage, albeit shortlived.

Weschke enrolled at St Martin's School of Art, but left after a term, restless and keen to travel. Although he had initially wanted to become a sculptor, trips to Italy and Spain determined that he would be a painter. He also read voraciously on a wide variety of subjects; from his unpromising beginnings, he was to become a highly cultured man.

At the time he moved to Cornwall, Weschke was painting in an abstract idiom, but his art was always distinctively different from the core St Ives artists. Whereas they painted in a high chromatic range, he employed only earth colours that suited his evocations of the darker side of life, and the violent land and seascape of Cape Cornwall. Landscape was to become an abiding theme, but it was cloaked in a sense of myth and history that reflected his German heritage. Paintings of fires on the moor evoked a threat of barbarism that, as he had witnessed, was never far away.

His early exhibitions were well received and culminated in a one-man show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1974 which, amazingly, received no critical coverage.

The strains of Weschke's turbulent domestic life took a toll on his career, and it began to stagnate. However, in 1979 he was selected for inclusion in the Arts Council's first British Art show, and, the following year, he held a one-man exhibition at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, from which the Tate Gallery purchased a painting. The Tate acquired three further paintings in 1994, allocated a room to his work in 1996 and put on a retrospective exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2003.

Trips to Egypt in the late stages of his life fulfilled a lifetime ambition, for Weschke had a strong sense of the continuity of the artistic tradition from ancient times to the present day. Egypt was to have a profound impact on his art as he introduced bright blues and yellows into his paintings. Temples, pyramids, palm trees and the desert sands became motifs alongside his nudes, which took on a new lease of life with the stability of a long-term relationship with Petronilla Silver, whom he met in 1986 and eventually married in 2003.

Weschke was a humanist, who enjoyed convivial company as much as his isolation in Cape Cornwall. He had many local friends and, as an auxiliary coastguard, contributed to community life.

His lack of means ensured he lived a simple life. In a house warmed by wood-burning stoves, he entertained guests in his spartan kitchen, overlooking a mesmerising view of the Atlantic, providing middle-European fare, such as home-made latkes, cheesecake, marinated olives, Italian salami from the best delicatessens and fresh fish purchased direct from his trawlermen friends on the quay at Newlyn.

Honorary doctorates from the University of Plymouth (1994) and the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (2003), and the retrospective at Tate St Ives, were late recognition of Weschke's achievements and his place in British culture.

He is survived by his wife and five children, one of whom he did not see for 45 years, and two of whom he brought up virtually single-handed.

· Karl Martin Weschke, artist, born June 7 1925; died February 20 2005