26 Facts About Marianne Brandt

Marianne Brandt was a German painter, sculptor, photographer, metalsmith, and designer who studied at the Bauhaus art school in Weimar and later became head of the Bauhaus Metall-Werkstatt in Dessau in 1928.

Marianne Brandt worked as head of the design department of the company Ruppelwerk Metallwarenfabrik GmbH in Gotha until 1932.

Marianne Brandt studied painting and sculpture at the Weimar Saxon Grand Ducal Art School from 1911 to 1917.

Marianne Brandt studied and taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1923 to 1929.

Between her studies at these two schools, Marianne Brandt worked as a freelance artist.

Marianne Brandt studied painting with the artists Fritz Mackensen and Robert Weise before studying sculpture with Robert Engelmann.

Marianne Brandt ultimately became the only woman to attain her degree in the metal workshop.

When Moholy-Nagy departed from his Bauhaus teaching post in 1928, Marianne Brandt replaced him as acting director of the workshop.

Marianne Brandt is thus credited by some as a pioneer for gender equity in the arts.

Marianne Brandt trained as a painter before joining the Weimar Bauhaus in January of 1924, where she attended classes with Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee, among others, before joining the metal workshop in summer of the same year.

Marianne Brandt quickly rose to the position of workshop assistant; when Moholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus in 1928, she became the workshop's acting director, serving in the post for one year and negotiating some of the most important Bauhaus contracts for collaborations with industry.

From late 1929 through 1932, Marianne Brandt was head of design at the Ruppel Metal Goods factory in Gotha, Germany, until she lost her job due to the ongoing Great Depression.

Early in 1933, at the beginning of the Nazi period in Germany, Marianne Brandt first attempted to find work outside of the country, but family responsibilities called her back to Chemnitz.

Marianne Brandt was unable to find steady employment throughout the Nazi period.

However, Marianne Brandt was never a member of the Nazi Party.

Marianne Brandt lived out her days in East Germany, and died in Kirchberg, Saxony, at the age of 89.

At the invitation of Mart Stam, from 1949 to 1951 Marianne Brandt was a lecturer at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts.

Marianne Brandt taught at the Academy of Applied Art in Berlin from 1951 to 1954.

In 1926, Marianne Brandt moved with the Bauhaus to Dessau and a year later took charge of lighting design with the metal workshop, before becoming its director from 1928 to 1929.

Much of Marianne Brandt's energy was directed into her lighting designs, including collaborations with small number of Bauhaus colleagues and students.

Marianne Brandt had just finished showing five photographs at the famed "FiFo" exhibition put on by Werkbund.

Marianne Brandt still produced work, but it was not for a specific purpose or commission.

Marianne Brandt created experimental still-life compositions, but it is her series of self-portraits which are particularly striking.

Marianne Brandt was one of few women at Bauhaus who distanced herself from the fields considered more feminine at the time such as weaving or pottery.

Marianne Brandt refuses the trope of picturing the female body in a state of dressing or undressing.

Marianne Brandt's tea set designs are characteristic of the early phases of modernism.