Brandt was born Grace Lubell on January 25, 1915, as one of five children to a Jewish family in New York City. Her parents, Jeanette Lillian Salny[2] and Samuel L. Lubell (born Samuel Lazarus Lubelsky),[3] were both from Suwałki Governorate, Congress Poland.[1][4] Samuel founded the Bell Oil and Gas Company, an independent oil refiner in Tulsa, Oklahoma,[5] and Lubell Brothers, a shirt manufacturer in New York City.[6] Her siblings include oil executive Benedict I. Lubell and Shirley Black Kash (formerly married to Eli M. Black).[5][7]
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]
