Beckers share their father's passion for art
Pinedale Roundup -
April 3, 2015
by Joy Ufford
PINEDALE, WY – Seeing Kenny and Antonie Becker stand together
and look at their father's paintings and pen and ink sketches is like
seeing two more original Becker artworks.
Antonie, an actress, who has lived around the
world, is dressed, mainly in elegant New York black and silver. Younger
brother Kenny, once a zoology student who lives in Pinedale, feeds
neighborhood deer and wild birds and catches snowmelt off his roof
into a row of buckets.
Both love the outdoors, both sketch and paint,
and both recall an exuberant and tumultuous life of living with a father
whose work served him well but whose passion was painting.
'Kenneth Perrin Becker, 1913 – 1972' opened with a reception Thursday night in the gallery hall of the Sublette County Library in Pinedale and will be displayed through April.
Kenneth Perrin Becker was born in a Chicago suburb in 1913 and from a young age, carried a sketchbook with him. He filled volumes with studies done in watercolors, pen and ink, and ink washes, which could stand on their own as separate original pieces.
As a child, Becker Sr. suffered from asthma
and his father took him on many desert trips to Encampment, Wyo.,
New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado ' for the arid climate as much
as the landscape, according to Antonie.
'Those experiences really shaped his paintings,' she said. 'He was obsessed with mountains. '
Becker also filled sketchbooks when he traveled with his partents to Haiti, Guatemala and Columbia.
'He traveled the New World, ' Kenny explained.
These sketchbooks Kenny has 'kept intact, ' along
with many paintings and drawings he stored after their father's death,
and Antonie too kept boxes of his sketchbooks and flat–filed
paintings.
A prolific artist who was influenced by others but developed his own style, he was probably most content with life while he was painting and loved to give his artworks – almost exclusively landscapes – to people who admired them.
Some of his paintings displayed on the library's earthy walls show a ferocity of energy with lines scratching through dark storm clouds. Othere reveal softer meditative curves and washes of color – sometimes as a very subtle highlight in an otherwise black and white piece, sometimes with the color replacing inked details completely.
Although Becker's passion was painting, his
father needed his help at the Ketterlinus Lithographic Manufacturing
Co. in Chicago. He always had a studio, according to Antonie and Kenny.
And he always gathered people to him, they recalled.
'He was a social animal, ' Kenny said of his father.
In the 1940's, he became friends with Walter Paepcke, the man who would start Aspen's ski resort industry on another influential mountain landscape,' Antonie said.
'The 10th Mountain Divisino started it, ' Kenny added. 'The Aspen Ski Corporation. '
'Dad would rent an old miner 's cabin in the summer – it was a lovely little town then,' his sister explained. 'He would take out his easel and paint, he sold a lot of those paintings there.'
Their father's social life eventually overwhelmed him and led to his death at 59. The Art Institue of Chicago purchased four paintings for its permanent collection and until now, his work has not been displayed. This year marks 50 years since his first 'proper exhibit,' Antonie said.
'This library is so extraordinary,' said Antonie. 'I live in New York City and there is nothing there like this. He would love to see his paintings on this adobe wall. How perfect.'
For more information abouth the life and art
of Kenneth Perrin Becker, visit http://kennethperrinbecker.com.
The Art Digest - September 15, 1949
Philadelphia Art News by Dorothy Drummond
"The Carl Schurz Foundation with quarters in the Old Custom House presents
a series of excellent watercolors by Kenneth Becker that catch the
feeling of the rugged country around Aspen, Colorado. An intelligent
as well as emotional painter, Becker offers a character study of a
portion of the West not far removed from the pioneer to have lost touch
with a frontier spirit. Watercolors of Victorian dwellings and ramshackle
saloons contrast with the magnificence of towering mountain forms that
reach to the clouds and spill down to the valleys (Razor Back and Above
a Maroon Lake)."
