Warren Brandt was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1918. He studied at the Pratt Institute in New York City from 1935 to 1939, then moved to California to work in animation for Walt Disney. After serving as an army portraitist during World War II, he returned to New York and joined the Art Students League under Yasuo Kuniyoshi. He completed his formal art education at Washington University in St. Louis with Philip Guston and Max Beckmann. Brandt maintained his ties to the Abstract Expressionist artists in New York, but travelled widely in the 1950s throughout Europe. In the early 1960s, he pivoted from Abstract Expressionism to a Matisse-esque style, which he applied to  nudes, still lifes, and paintings of his studio.

Brandt paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, the National Academy of Design in New York, and the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.