Anna Brahms studied Art History at the University of Jerusalem, then joined a puppet theater. She spent two years traveling, making puppets and performing with the troupe. After her son was born, Anna left the theater and moved to Jerusalem, where she began making dolls as well as puppets, and experimenting with different materials and techniques. She made her first doll from Fimo, a newly developed plastic clay in 1978, the year her daughter was born.
These early dolls were bought by a gallery in Tel- Aviv and not long after the family moved to Paris. Soon galleries throughout Europe began to buy Anna’s work.
Since moving to the United States in 1981, Anna has exhibited widely in Chicago and New York, as well as internationally. Her work has been displayed in Christmas windows at Tiffany and Saks Fifth Avenue in New York as well as at Lincoln Center’s Gallery of the Performing Arts, The Museum of the City of New York and the Muse’e des Arts Decoratifs in the Louvre in Paris.
Anna’s figures are between 12 and 35 inches tall. Their bodies are made of cotton on a metal armature. The heads and limbs are formed of clay, prosculpt, paper-mache’,wood and plaster and painted with acrylic paint. The hair is goat’s hair or silk threads and the eyes are glass.
Anna lives and works in Western Massachusetts, where she is inspired by the beauty of nature around her and especially the magical nature spirits.