Gertrud Arndt

Gertrud Arndt (née Hantschk; 20 September 1903 – 10 July 2000) was a German photographer and designer associated with the Bauhaus movement. She is remembered for her pioneering series of self-portraits 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 in Erfurt. Her interest in photography developed while serving at an architectural office in Erfurt, 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 Bauhaus from 1923 to 1927, where she studied under László Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. 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 and Günta Stölzl. She believed that studying weaving was the only way she could continue her studies at the Bauhaus as a woman. She qualified as a journeyman before the weavers guild in Glauchau, Saxony in 1927. 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.

Exhibition In January 2013, the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Tiergarten (Berlin) presented an exhibition of Gertrud Arndt's textiles and photographs.

Selected works

Self-Portrait with Sunglasses, Dessau, 1928, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC