19 Facts About Mart Stam

Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer.

Martinus Adrianus Stam was born in Purmerend, The Netherlands, on 5 August 1899 to a municipal tax collector, Arie Stam and his wife Alida Geertruida, nee de Groot, who was very engaged socially.

Mart Stam attended a local school in Purmerend, before training in Amsterdam at the National Standard School for Education in Drawing for two years between 1917 and 1919.

However, in 1920, Mart Stam was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the military, something which was compulsory in the Netherlands at that time.

Fortunately, Mart Stam was released early, after six months, and returned to the office of Granpre Moliere.

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Mart Stam was assigned to design a variety of buildings across Germany, notably assisting Taut in the design of the German Trade Union Federation Building, Dusseldorf.

In 1924 Mart Stam co-founded the magazine ABC Beitrage zum Bauen in Basle with El Lissitzky while Lissitzky was convalescing from tuberculosis.

Mart Stam is credited for at least part of the design of the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, built from 1926 through 1930 .

An embarrassing dispute over the authorship of this design caused Mart Stam to leave the office of Leen Van der Vlugt, the principal of the office and credited designer.

New research indicates that Mart Stam was inspired by a cantilever tubular steel seat seen installed in a 1926 Tatra T12 two-door saloon car.

Mart Stam won the lawsuit, and, since that time, specific Breuer chair designs have often been erroneously attributed to Mart Stam.

Mart Stam contributed a house to the 1927 Weissenhof Estate, the permanent housing project developed and presented by the exhibition Die Wohnung, organized by the Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart.

In 1930 Mart Stam became one of the 20 architects and urban planners organized by Frankfurt city planner Ernst May who traveled together to the Soviet Union to create a string of new modernist cities in the Stalinist Soviet Union, including Magnitogorsk.

Mart Stam was there in February 1931 to participate in the struggle to build rational worker housing from the ground up, an effort ultimately defeated by adverse weather, corruption, and poor design decisions.

Mart Stam moved to planning activities in Makeyevka in Ukraine in 1932, then to Orsk, with his friend Hans Schmidt and with Bauhaus student and future wife Lotte Beese, then to the copper-mining Soviet city of Balgash.

Between 1934 and 1948 Mart Stam attempted to gain a foothold in his home country again.

From 1934 Mart Stam cultivated a friendship with the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Willem Sandberg, which leads to job opportunities and creative commissions.

In 1939, upon referral of Sandberg, Mart Stam becomes director of the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs, IvKNO in Amsterdam .

In 1950 Mart Stam became director of the Advanced Institute of Art in Berlin.