Marianne Brandt

Marianne Brandt (German, 1893–1983) studied painting and sculpture at the Grand-Ducal Saxon Art Academy in Weimar from 1911 to 1917. Beginning in 1924, Brandt studied at Bauhaus under the tutelage of Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and in the metal shop under László Moholy-Nagy.
From April 1927 she was assistant in the metal workshop and its acting head from April 1928 to September 1929. Her artistic and academic career was quite astonishing since until her arrival, any women enrolling at the Bauhaus were assigned to the supposedly more feminine subjects like “weaving”.
In 1926 while at Bauhaus Dessau she began to experiment with photography in addition to her design work with metal. She took many self-portraits and portraits of Bauhaus personalities and made photomontages inspired by László Moholy-Nagy's art theory. In 1929 she participated in the Film und Fotografie exhibition in Stuttgart.
From 1933 on she worked as a freelance metal designer in Chemnitz and after 1949 taught at schools of art in Dresden and Berlin-Weissensee.