
Masked Self-Portrait, 39A, Dessau (Maskenselbstportrait, 39A, Dessau)
1930 · Gelatin silver print
Image: 21.8 × 13.7 cm (8 5/8 × 5 7/16 in.)
Art Institute of Chicago

Gertrud Arndt was a German photographer and weaver whose practice bridged the Bauhaus curriculum of the 1920s and postwar experimental abstraction. Working primarily in black-and-white photography and textile design, she created geometric compositions that dissolved figuration into pattern and light. Her self-portraits, often masked or fragmented, treated the human face as a formal problem rather than a vehicle for expression. Arndt's work remained largely undocumented until late in her life, when her archive revealed a rigorous, decades-long engagement with modernist abstraction across two distinct media.
Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 25d ago