Gertrud Arndt (''née'' Hantschk; 20 September 1903 – 10 July 2000) was a German photographer and designer associated with the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

movement. She is remembered for her pioneering series of

self-portrait A self-portrait is a representation of an artist that is drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by that artist. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century tha ...

s from around 1930.

Biography

Born Gertrud Hantschk in Ratibor (then Upper Silesia), in September 1903, Arndt began her artistic studies as a student at the

Kunstgewerbeschule A Kunstgewerbeschule (English: ''School of Arts and Crafts'' or S''chool of Applied Arts'') was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for thes ...

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits i ...

.Witkovsky, Matthew S., and Peter Demetz. Foto : Modernity In Central Europe, 1918-1945. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art in association with Thames and Hudson, 2007. Her interest in photography developed while serving at an architectural office in

, where she learned darkroom techniques and began taking photographs of local buildings. None of these early photographs exist. Thanks to a scholarship, she was a student at the

from 1923 to 1927, where she studied under

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the i ...

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...

, and

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

. Arndt had initially hoped to study architecture, however, she felt lost as the only woman in the construction course. She instead enrolled in the weaving workshop, where she studied under the tutelage of

Georg Muche Georg Muche (8 May 1895 – 26 March 1987) was a German painter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher. Early life and education Georg Muche was born on 8 May 1895 in Querfurt, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, and grew up in the Rhön ...

and Günta Stölzl."Gertrud Arndt (-Hantschk)"
, Bauhaus. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
, Bauhaus-archiv. Retrieved 15 March 2013. She believed that studying weaving was the only way she could continue her studies at the Bauhaus as a woman. Her most famous carpet - which has not survived - lay in the office of

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...

from 1924 onwards.Bauhaus Archive in Berlin Exhibits Works by Gertrud Arndt
germany.info, 1 February 2013. Accessed 13 February 2013. She qualified as a journeyman before the Weaver's Guild in Glaucha, Saxony in 1927. Later that year, she married fellow student, and architect, Alfred Arndt, who was appointed full-time master of the Bauhaus construction workshop in

Dessau Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßlau ...

in 1929. Although no longer a student, Arndt remained active in Bauhaus events and enrolled in Walter Peterhan's newly created photography course. Without full-time work, Arndt embraced photography as a means to stave off her boredom. In the next five years producing a series of 43 self-portraits as well as images of her friend

Otti Berger Otti Berger (Otilija Ester Berger) was born on 4 October 1898 in present-day Zmajevac, Croatia. She was a student and later teacher at the Bauhaus, where she was a textile artist and weaver. She was murdered in 1944 at Auschwitz during the Holo ...

. In 1932, the couple moved to

Probstzella Probstzella is a municipality in the district Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, in Thuringia, Germany. History Between 1945 and 1990 Probstzella station served as East German inner German border crossing for rail transport. The crossing was open for trains t ...

in Thuringia, where Alfred worked as a free-lance architect. In 1948 they settled in Soviet-occupied Darmstadt, and by 1950 were again in contact with other former Bauhaus members. In those post war years, interest in the Bauhaus quickly rose again. In 1979 Arndt received international acclaim when her photographs were exhibited at

Museum Folkwang Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patr ...

. She returned to Dessau in 1994, invited by the Vorwerk company to discuss new line of rugs based on designs exclusively by women. Gertud Arndt died in July 2000 at the age of ninety-six. Ever playful, she suggested that her friends and family "celebrate a joyful Bauhaus party" after her death.

Photography

Arndt's photography, forgotten until the 1980s, has been compared to that of her contemporaries Marta Astfalck-Vietz and

Claude Cahun Claude Cahun (, born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob; 25 October 1894 – 8 December 1954) was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer. Schwob adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1914. Cahun is best known as a writer and self-portr ...

. Over the five years when she took an active interest in photography, she captured herself and her friends in various styles, costumes and settings in the series known as ''Maskenportäts'' (Masked Portraits). Although at the time Arndt refused to attribute any deep artistic meaning to her photographs, they were imaginative and provocative. Through her costumes, Arndt created playful reinterpretations of such feminine tropes as the widow, socialite, and a little girl. Writing for Berlin Art Link, Angela Connor describes the images as "ranging from severe to absurd to playful." Arndt's photographic style itself was likewise unique, and defied the usual aspects of modernist photography, which often included extreme angles, constructivist mirroring, or geometric simplifications. Instead the viewer is confronted with Arndt head on, unable to ignore the expression communicated by her face and the accessories that framed it. In an interview as a nonagenarian, Arndt told Sabina Leßmann, "I am simply interested in the face, what does one make from a face? There you only need to open your eyes wide and already you are someone else. Isn't that true?" Today Arndt is considered to be a pioneer of female self-portraiture, her work echoing in that of

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

and

Sophie Calle Sophie Calle (born 9 October 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement known as Oulipo. ...

.Nicola Kuhn, "Gattin beim Rollenspiel"
''Der Tagesspiegel'', 3 February 2013. Retrieved 15 March 2013.

Exhibition

In January 2013, the Bauhaus Museum of Design in Berlin presented an exhibition of Gertrud Arndt's textiles and photographs.

References

Literature

* * *Lessmann, Sabina. "Die Maske der Weiblichket nimmt kuriose formen an... (The Mask of Femininity Takes on Curious Forms). In Eskildsen, Ute. Fotografieren hieß teilnehmen. Richter, 1994. *

External links

A number of her strange self-portraits selected by James ConwayBiography and one or two photographs from Bauhaus
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arndt, Gertrud 1903 births 2000 deaths German women photographers Portrait photographers People from Racibórz Bauhaus alumni German weavers People from the Province of Silesia 20th-century German women artists Women textile artists German textile artists 20th-century women photographers