His father, Leon Joseph Brandt, was a cotton farmer who had served as mayor of Greensboro from 1907 to 1909, and his mother, Jessie Wooding, was a Virginia native.
[5] Brandt began his formal art education by attending night classes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1935 to 1937, while making deliveries in the garment district by day.
[7] His studies were interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the National Guard for one year in 1941, and the U.S. Army (1943–1946) at Fort Bragg as an official portraitist.
[1][2][10][11] During this period Brandt made frequent trips from Greensboro to New York where he spent time at the Cedar Tavern, a well-known gathering place for abstract expressionists.
[7] Also while pursuing his graduate studies, Brandt made significant contributions to art education by taking on leadership positions at numerous institutions across the United States.
He arranged for prominent painters and sculptors such as John Grillo, Sidney Geist, Reuben Kadish, Paul Burlin, David Slivka, Milton Resnick, and Edward Dugmore, to visit the school.
The gallery opened featuring Mitchell's personal collection, which included works by George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, Arthur Bowen Davies, and Maurice Prendergast; as well as paintings on loan by Alexander Brook, Thomas Eakins, Walt Kuhn, and John Henry Twachtman.
After leaving Carbondale, Brandt and Grace divided their time between a Manhattan apartment and a converted potato barn in Water Mill, near East Hampton.
[1][11] In a comprehensive 1988 review for The New York Times, art critic Phyllis Braff analyzed Brandt's still-life paintings, praising their "luminosity and radiance" and noting their "distinct majesty."
She observed how Brandt transcended traditional still-life conventions through his innovative compositions, comparing his structural approach to Cézanne's belief in the independent reality of a painting's design.