Profession: designer

Stam, generally less well-known than deserved, was one of the most significant European artists and designers of the 1920’s and 30’s. He was the first to come up with a tubular steel chair (winning a case against Breuer to establish this). Mies selected him to feature in a famous showcase of modernist architecture. Gropius wanted him to lead the Bauhaus’s architecture department (he declined). He worked briefly with Poelzig. Lissitzky was a close friend, and like Rietveld and to some extent Corbusier, Giedion and van Eesteren, a collaborator and colleague in the pursuit of advanced ideas about architecture and planning.

Breuer was one of the key modernist architects, and a highly influential furniture designer. In Hungary he belonged to a circle with strong links to van Doesburg and de Stijl. Gropius became his mentor, friend and colleague first at the Bauhaus, and later in the U.S. Moholy taught with him, and briefly lived in the same London block. He met Corbusier in Paris, designed an apartment building for Giedion in Zürich, and named a chair after his colleague Kandinsky. He was friends with Calder, taught Johnson and Pei, collaborated with Nervi, and redesigned Piscator’s apartment in modern style (complete with punchbag).

Behrens employed him (and his friends Mies van der Rohe and Gropius) as a young man. Hoffmann, Moser and Klimt were all met around the same time on a visit to Vienna. Braque, Picasso, Lipchitz, Gris and Léger were among artist friends and acquaintances in Paris after WWI. Ozenfant and he started a post-cubist artistic movement together. He met Meyerhold and Eisenstein on a trip to Moscow, and Baker on a voyage to Rio. Perriand worked in his studio designing furniture. He travelled across Spain with Léger, collaborated on a building with Sert, and on an electronic poem with Varèse.