Brandt left Greensboro for New York City immediately after graduating from high school and took night classes at Pratt Institute. Military service in World War II, from 1940 into 1945 deferred his studies, but with the educational benefits of the G.I. bill, he went to Washington University, St Louis, where he studied with Philip Guston, and Max Beckmann, and attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. In 1948 Brandt also received a Milliken Fellowship which enabled him to go abroad, spending three months in Rome and seven in Paris.
On his return in 1949 Brandt accepted the position of chairman of the art department of Salem College, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but the following year he returned to New York, where he taught at Pratt, took art history courses at New York University, and painted. In 1952 Brandt returned to Greensboro, where he built a studio, and painted daily, while attending the University of North Carolina; he received an Master of Fine Arts degree in 1953. From 1958 to 1962 Brandt taught and chaired the art departments at, first, the University of Mississippi, ***, and then, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He then returned permanently to New York. Initially, he continued his activity as a teacher, giving courses at the School of Visual Arts, 1962-64, and in 1967 serving as director of the New York Studio School.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Brandt's work was largely abstract in character, but by 1964 he had begun to focus on the world around him, creating the warm, lyrical still lifes and interiors for which he is known. Having been widely represented in group exhibitions from the start of his career, in the 1960s he began having yearly solo exhibitions. His work was shown at David Barnett Gallery, Milwaukee, and often at Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York, and Fishbach Gallery, New York. Brandt's paintings are in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Guild Hall, East Hampton; and the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina. He lives in New York and in Water Mill near East Hampton.
