Lot 125: WARREN BRANDT (1918-2002) NUDE WITH HEAD SCARF

Framed Original Warren Brandt (American/North Carolina, 1918-2002) Seated "Nude with Head Scarf" Pencil Drawing. Drawing measures 12"x9" inches (sight); signed lower right recto "Warren Brandt". In Gallery Frame from the David Barnett Gallery 16"x12.75"x.75" Weight 2 pds 11 oz. PROVENANCE: A Private Southampton, NY Collection. Mr. Brandt was born in Greensboro, N.C., and moved to New York after high school, attending Pratt Institute at night. He studied with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League and, after five years as an official portraitist in the Army during World War II, continued his education under the G.I. Bill. He studied with Philip Guston and Max Beckmann at Washington University in St. Louis. All the while he kept close ties with Abstract Expressionists in New York, and his art reflected their influence. In 1960, after he and his wife were divorced, he married Grace Borgenicht, an artist and art dealer in New York who had a gallery on 57th Street and was an early champion of contemporary American art. Mr. Brandt moved to New York and made a radical change in his art, developing a Matissesque style in nudes, still lifes and scenes from his studio. Mr. Brandt showed often at the Sachs gallery on Madison Avenue and the Fischbach gallery on 57th Street, and his paintings are in the collections of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, the National Academy of Design in New York and the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, in addition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ref: NY Times, May 2002; Warren Brandt by Nicholas Fox Weber 1988.