Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach was born son of the painter and drawing teacher Leonhard Diefenbach in Hadamar/Hesse in 1851. He received first artistic training from his father, however, he was initially active as a design draftsman for a railroad construction office and for several photo studios. After he had relocated to Munich in 1872, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach worked as a freelancer for the photography publishing house Hanfstaengel, the same year he began to study at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, among other with Wilhelm Lindenschmit as teacher. After he had been severely ill with typhus in 1873 Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach developed increasing interest in alternative ways of life. He had visionary experience and joined a non-denominational community, in 1885 he founded the alternative community “Humanitas“ in a stone-pit near Höllriegelskreuth south of Munich. In 1887 the young artist Hugo Höppener, also called Fidus, joined the community. Together with Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach he worked on the monumental silhouette frieze “Per aspera ad astra“, which combines children‘s and animal motifs over an entire length of 68 meters. The artist repeatedly came into conflict with his social surroundings and local authorities because of his odd character, his missionary intentness and his overall unusual lifestyle. In 1892 Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach followed an invitation of the Austrian Kunstverein and relocated with his family to Vienna. The Czech artist František Kupka was his student for some time. After he had spent some time in Egypt, where his plans for a Humanitas temple in Cairo eventually failed, Diefenbach returned to Vienna and founded the commune “Himmelhof“. Despite much frequented exhibitions the artist was not successful commercially and eventually had to file bankruptcy. He traveled to Italy and settled on the island of Capri in 1900. For a small fee he showed visitors the exhibition of his symbolist landscape paintings in his studio and explained his life reform concepts, additionally, he sold small versions of his monumental paintings.
The years on Capri were Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach‘s most productive period. As a consequence of a deep occupation with the island‘s geography, large-size landscape paintings came into existence, most of them show typical depictions of grottos and cliff lines, at the same time they are also reflections of his inner life. In 1913 Diefenbach died on Capri.
After years in oblivion the life and work of Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach was honored in a successful exhibition at Villa Stuck in Munich in 2009. The exhibition was also mounted at the Hermesvilla in Vienna in 2011.