1903–2000 · Born in Silesia
In one sentence
An architect-in-training who ended up in weaving, and a photographer whose playful self-portraits still surprise.
Born Gertrud Hantschk in Silesia, she trained in architecture before joining the Bauhaus in 1923. She wanted architecture but was pointed toward weaving, which she later said she accepted reluctantly. She married architect Alfred Arndt in 1927.
She designed carpets and textiles. In 1930 she made the Mask Portraits (Maskenporträts), a series of about 40 self-portraits in different costumes, wigs and veils, an early experiment in staged identity decades before similar work was celebrated. Only in the 1980s was this series widely discovered.
Her photographs were private experiments, unpublished for decades, and she was long known mainly as "Alfred Arndt's wife."
The Mask Portraits are now regularly shown in major exhibitions on photography and portraiture.
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