Gertrud Arndt

• Name — Gertrud Arndt • Birth Name — Gertrud Hantschk • Born — 20 September 1903 • Birthplace — Ratibor, Upper Silesia • Died — 10 July 2000 • Place of death — Darmstadt, Germany • Field — Photography • Movement — Bauhaus

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. Her most famous carpet – which has not survived – lay in the office of Walter Gropius from 1924 onwards. She qualified as a journeyman before the weavers guild in Glauchau, 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 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. In 1932, the couple moved to Probstzella 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. 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.

In January 2013, the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Tiergarten (Berlin) presented an exhibition of Gertrud Arndt's textiles and photographs. Arndt's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.

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

Gertrud Arndt was recorded at birth as Gertrud Hantschk. The authorities additionally record the headings Gertrud Hantschk, Gertrude Arndt, Gertrud Arndt-Hantschk and Arndt. Her recorded language was German. She married Alfred Arndt.

Gertrud Arndt is recorded as photographer and textile artist.

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