Grace Borgenicht Brandt

She was born Grace Lubell on January 25, 1915, to a Jewish family in New York City.[1] Her father Samuel L. Lubell founded the Bell Oil and Gas Company, an independent oil refiner in Tulsa, Oklahoma[2] and Lubell Brothers, a shirt manufacturer in New York City.[3] She has two siblings: oil executive Benedict I. Lubell and Shirley Black Kash (formerly married to Eli M. Black).[2][4] She attended Calhoun School and the New College at Columbia University. In 1934, while still a student, she studied in the studio of the painter André L'Hote in Paris.[1] After returning to New York, she studied printmaking at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 and earned a M.A. in art education from Columbia.[1] After school, she painted professionally, having her first solo show at Chris Ritter's Laurel Gallery in 1947 and later became one of Ritter's primary financial backers.[1] After Ritter closed the Laurel Gallery in 1950, Brandt opened her own gallery, The Grace Borgenicht Gallery, in May 1951.[1] Her gallery focused on living American artists including Milton Avery, Ilya Bolotowsky, Jimmy Ernst, Wolf Kahn, Gabor Peterdi, Leonard Baskin, Edward Corbett, and Ralston Crawford.[1] She represented Avery until his death in 1965 and also represented Gertrude Greene, José de Rivera, Adja Yunkers, James Brooks and Roy Gussow. In 1995, she closed her gallery.[1]

Although known as an art dealer, she continued to paint and showed her work in the 1954 Whitney Annual and had a solo show at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1955.[1]

Brandt married three times. In 1938, she married dress manufacturer Jack Borgenicht; they had three daughters before divorcing,[1][5][6] Jan Borgenicht Schwartz, Berta Borgenicht Kerr, and Lois Borgenicht.[7] (Jack would go on to have seven more children including artist Ruth Borgenicht).[8] Her second husband was Norman Sachs Jr.; they also divorced.[1] In 1960, she married her third husband, artist Warren Brandt.[1] She had a stepdaughter, Isabella Brandt Johansen[7] She lived in Manhattan and Watermill, New York.[1] Brandt died in Manhattan on July 19, 2001, at the age of 86[1] after an accidental fall.[5] Services were held at the Riverside Memorial Chapel.[7]