Broodhagen was born in Georgetown, Guyana, on July 4, 1909. When he was around 15 years old, his mother, who was moving to the United States, stopped in Barbados and placed young Karl in an extended apprenticeship with a Barbadian tailor. He became a proficient tailor and when his mother died in 1933 he decided to settle in Barbados for good.
Broodhagen started experimenting with oil paintings during the 1930s. By the 1940s, he began working with clay and produced several impressive pieces, one of which was a bust of the young Barbadian novelist George Lamming, which he completed in 1945. In 1947, Broodhagen left his job as a tailor and was asked to start an art department at the prestigious Combermere School in Barbados. His work as both a teacher and an artist led him to participate in an exhibition at the British Council in 1948, where he was awarded a scholarship toward formal art education in Great Britain.
From 1952 to 1954 Broodhagen attended Goldsmith's College in London, where he received advanced art training and education. While he was in London, he was exposed for the first time to non-Western art. Critics have asserted that this experience led to a process of rediscovery that articulated "a new ethos in his work".
On his return to Barbados, he continued to teach and direct the art department at Combermere, with which he was associated for almost 50 years. More importantly, he undertook an even more fruitful career as an artist and as a sculptor. The interest generated by his pieces has been credited with reintroducing the field of sculpture to Barbadian arts. Among his more important works are Neferdine (1961), Benin's Head (1971), and the Emancipatation Statue (1985), also known as Bussa, after the slave who started the revolt that brought freedom to Barbadian slaves. He has also painted several significant pictures such as "The Portrait of Ann Marie Assing" (1957). His wood, clay, and terra cotta work is produced out of his home-based studio in Barbados.
He is a generous artist who has not been overly concerned with the financial potential of his sculptures, and still owns a significant number of his completed works. Broodhagen's paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in Barbados and throughout the Caribbean; most recently, his sculpture Benin Head traveled throughout the United States with the exhibit Caribbean Visions (1995).
His work is part of the collections of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris; the University Chapel at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus; and Drexel University in Philadelphia. Throughout his career he has received many significant awards. Among them are the Queen's Jubilee Medal of Barbados (1977) and the Gold Crown of Merit (1982).
There are many critics who have tried to successfully characterize and explain Broodhagen's work. Broodhagen summarizes it succinctly by saying that he is just "interested in people" (Lewis 1995). It is generally agreed that his work expresses a naturalistic view that is consistent with the artist's simple way of life. He specializes in busts and portraits. His works are a quest to find the essential character, nature, and simplicity of the African element of the Caribbean. He has tried to find the essence, or product, that has come out of centuries of oppression and subjugation.
Christopher Crozier, for instance, has called for critics to rethink their analyses of Broodhagen's work to account for a political thematic and social relevance that he thinks has been missing from their earlier assessments. He even suggests that his work has more political and social depth than the work of Edna Manley, generally seen as the mother of Caribbean modernism in the field of sculpture. Broodhagen's work tends to be strong but at the same time understated. It has a simplicity that reveals the true character of his subjects without pretension.
