STUDIO VISIT: HAIDEE BECKER
- Words Precious Adesina
- Photos Alixe Lay
Inside the London studio—and home—designed to provide all the inspiration one painter needs.
( 1 ) In Rome, Becker's parents hosted glamorous parties during which they staged marionette theaters. The pair made a strong impression on the film director Federico Fellini, who, according to Becker, offered her mother (and the puppets) a role in his 1960 movie La Dolce Vita. Campbell declined, but Fellini based two intellectual characters—the Steiners—on Becker's parents and replicated their apartment (even using their paintings) in the film.
( 2 ) Becker’s son is chef and restaurateur Jacob Kenedy, who opened Bocca di Lupo in London’s Soho neighborhood in 2008. Off the back of its success, he has since opened a gelateria, Gelupo, and Plaquemine Lock—a gastropub on the Regent's Canal that has received Michelin’s Bib Gourmand award three years running. He is also the author of three cookbooks, including The Geometry of Pasta.
The first thing you notice as you enter Haidee Becker’s quaint north London home-cum-studio is the large folding screen standing next to the stairs in the hall, painted with bold abstract shapes. “Don't you think that's amazing?” says the 74-year-old artist, noting that the work has stopped visiting art dealers in their tracks. “They would say, ‘Oh, that's really good. Do you have anything more like that?'”
( 1 ) In Rome, Becker's parents hosted glamorous parties during which they staged marionette theaters. The pair made a strong impression on the film director Federico Fellini, who, according to Becker, offered her mother (and the puppets) a role in his 1960 movie La Dolce Vita. Campbell declined, but Fellini based two intellectual characters—the Steiners—on Becker's parents and replicated their apartment (even using their paintings) in the film.
( 2 ) Becker’s son is chef and restaurateur Jacob Kenedy, who opened Bocca di Lupo in London’s Soho neighborhood in 2008. Off the back of its success, he has since opened a gelateria, Gelupo, and Plaquemine Lock—a gastropub on the Regent's Canal that has received Michelin’s Bib Gourmand award three years running. He is also the author of three cookbooks, including The Geometry of Pasta.
