Karl Edvard Diriks was born in 1855 in Christiania to Christian Ludvig Diriks and Benedicte Henriette Munch, and was the cousin of the artists Edvard Munch and Frits Thaulow. He began his studies in Germany where he became acquainted with the painters Christian Krohg, Hans Fredrik Gude, Frits Thaulow and Max Klinger. He first studied to become an architect at Karlsruhe from 1874 to 1875. Later he accompanied Krohg and Klinger to Berlin in the autumn of 1875 as a student at the Bauakademie.

     In the autumn of 1879 he settled in Christiania and made his debut with Weimar motifs in the Artist Exhibition in Christiania (Kunstforening), and at the Munich exhibition the same year. On his first trip to Paris from 1882–1883, he became acquainted with Impressionism, in particular Monet's large exhibition in March 1883. He painted a large street scene, "La Rue de Rome" with a lively representation of the traffic entirely in the spirit of Monet, and with it he entered the Salon of Fine Arts of 1883. Beyond the 1890s, however, he developed the broad, loose brush strokes and the distinctive color scale that ushers in his later Expressionist French period.

     He was married in 1892 to Swedish-born artist and sculptor Anna Westerberg (1870–1932) and settled in Drøbak. After a stay in Bergen, in January 1895 he went on a longer journey which, besides Paris, led him to Spain, Italy, Germany and Austria.

     In 1899 he settled in Paris at the urging of the French publicist Julien Leclercq, where he held his first exhibition and soon had a solid position in the French art scene. Also an exhibition in Antwerp in 1901 attracted considerable attention. An article about Diriks in October 1902 for La Grande France written by Marius Leblond was entitled, "Le peintre du vent" (The painter of wind). This designation followed the artist for the rest of his life.

     He followed up his success with great energy – one solo exhibition followed another in France, Germany, Denmark and Norway, and he regularly exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants, Salon des Beaux Arts, and Salon d'Automne.

     During the first World War, the artist was mainly in Paris, but painted in 1917 in Cancale in Normandy and in Collioure in 1918. The artist home became a meeting place for many foreign artists, including Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. His position was confirmed not least through the acquisition of of four of his works by the French state. In 1921 he was back in Norway for the first time in nine years and in 1922 he settled down for good in Drøbak.

     He was known for his naturalist outdoor paintings of clouds, rain squalls, snow flurry, storms and rough seas. In a 1930 catalog preface, Gunnar Reiss-Andersen gave a fine characterization of this side of Diriks' art, which was probably the essential basis for his success in France, "There is always something going on in his pictures, strange events in the clouds, violent scenes between the sea and the winds... There are ravishing dialogues between air and land, large mass formations of clouds in the glow of the sea's red evenings, of mighty poplars' long trains over the plain, where shadows and light clothe the landscape on and off".

     He was decorated Knight First Class of the Order of St. Olav in 1907, and Officer of the French Legion of Honour in 1920. In total he held more than 45 solo exhibitions, and participated in an additional 49 group exhibitions.

     The artist is represented in these public institutions:

• National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo

• The Oslo City Museum

• Musée d'Orsay

• Lillehammer City's painting collection

• The Norwegian Maritime Museum

• Stavanger Permanent Gallery

• Trøndelag Art Gallery

• The Rasmus Meyer Collection and Museum

• The Folkwang Museum in Essen

• Museum Baron Martin in France