✖ THE BASICS Over the 20 or so years that the visionary 20th century artistic icon Alexis Preller lived at Dombeya, his smallholding near Brits, he almost always had a new building project on the go. From the mid-1950s onwards, Preller constructed a complex of buildings that in the end included his house and studio, a guesthouse, a swimming pool and changing room, and his swan song – a remarkable gallery/museum space known as the Mudhif.
A vaulted brick building inspired by the giant arched grass structures made by the Marsh Arabs ofthe architect Norman Eaton, who died in 1966 after a car accident, and left much of his collection of art and artefacts to Preller. The Mudhif was intended to house Eaton’s collection.
