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Art: Tonight the World

Returning to grandmother’s dream world

January 28, 2019 15:35
8.  Daria Martin  Tonight the World, 2019 anamorphic 16mm film transferred to HD 13.5 minutes -® Daria Martin, courtesy Maureen Paley, London

By

Anthea Gerrie,

Anthea Gerrie

2 min read

To visitors, it’s a handsome Czech Modernist villa But to Susi Stiassni it was a place that haunted her dreams — the family home in Brno, from where she fled the Nazis as a child, later used as a residence for a Gestapo officer. She never forgot it in 80 years.

Now life at Villa Stiassni before the war been reimagined by Susi’s granddaughter, Daria Martin, in an exhibition opening next week at the Barbican. “The family didn’t get their house back after the war, although overtures were made, but I did get permission to film there,” explains Martin.

The Stiassnis, whose wealth was built on textiles, lived in the villa designed by noted Jewish architect Ernst Wiesner for just nine years before taking flight in 1938. They landed in London, dispatching Susi, then 13,to Battle Abbey boarding school in Sussex. “She was the only Jewish girl and spoke no English; it must have been a huge adjustment, yet she was the top student,” says American-born Martin, who is professor of art at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford as well as a film-maker.

The Stiassnis lived in the UK for three years, then settled in California. Art brought grandmother and grand daughter together during Martin’s childhood. “I used to draw in the studio where she painted and we became close; she was almost like a second mother.”