Karl Hartung was born as the son of a carpenter in Hamburg in 1908. After his apprenticeship as a stonemason, Karl Hartung started to study art. Due to a scholarship Hartung went to Paris in 1929 and studied the opus of Rodin and Maillos. In 1932 Karl Hartung returned to Hamburg but soon recognised that both working and living conditions became harder for him as an abstract sculptor due to cultural politics under the NS Regime. Therefore he relocated with his family to Berlin. It was only in 1946 that Hartung had his artistic breakthrough with his first personal exhibition at the Rosen Galery in Berlin. Three years later, Karl Hartung was appointed to the University of Fine Arts in Berlin. In 1955 he took over the chair of the German Artist's association. In that year, Hartung took part at the Documenta I. Participation at the Biennale in Venice and other international exhibitions followed. Karl Hartung died in Berlin on 19 June 1976.