Rex Brandt

Rexford Elson Brandt (August 12, 1914 – March 21, 2000) was an American performer and educator. Much of his oeuvre consists of paintings inspired by the enthusiasm and geography of the West Coast of the United States, particularly California. Brandt worked in combined mediums including print making, oil painting and watercolor painting. He gained national recognition for his watercolor painting during the times from the mid 1930s to the 1990s. Early in his career he was associated with California Scene Painting but after World War II Brandt focused on complex, semi-abstract works. The depiction of the regenerative glow of the sun was a central focus of his painting; he wrote that "Everyone has hang-ups, I suppose. Mine is sunshine. Not sunlight -- although I when to paint sunlight too."

Brandt was an influential educator through his many years of teaching and publishing. He taught at numerous scholastic institutions including Riverside Junior College and the Chouinard Art Institute. Along afterward the painter Phil Dike, he opened the Brandt-Dike Summer School of Painting in 1947 at his house in Corona del Mar where he continued to tutor summer classes for thirty-eight years. He published his first folder of watercolor suggestion in 1948 and continued to write and reveal throughout his life. In 1993 he was awarded an American Artist Achievement Award for his teaching.