Filmmaker Fabiola Beracasa Beckman remembers the first time she set foot inside her town house in New York’s West Village. Because the 1820s building had never been structurally altered (one of its previous owners was Richard Jenrette, the American financier and lifelong restorer of classical architecture), “it felt like a class trip to period homes,” she says. “The moldings and all of the beautiful bones of the house were intact.”
As Beracasa Beckman and her designer, Fernando Santangelo, collaborated on the multiyear renovation (featured in AD's December 2025 cover story), three specific features in her home kept her on brief: the dramatic Sol LeWitt wall drawing in the entry foyer; a wall of Picasso ceramics, collected over three decades by her family; and the San Patrignano wall coverings in the living room and primary bedroom.
The Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing
The Sol LeWitt piece was a gift from Beracasa Beckman’s mother, Veronica Hearst. “It’s a fantastic piece of art because, in reality, what you buy is a document with the IP, so you can take a paper document with instructions and execute it on a large wall in any space,” she says. (Technically, the three cubic rectangles are a section of the complete 1989 LeWitt work, Wall Drawing 604H, which consists of five rectangles.) With a laugh, she adds, “It’s really the easiest way to travel with very large art.”
When the family moved into the house, they identified the wall and contacted The Sol LeWitt Foundation, ultimately connecting with Sofia LeWitt, Sol’s daughter, who personally visited to help determine the best positioning. “It’s so much more involved than I ever imagined,” Beracasa Beckman says. “The painters from the foundation come, and they don’t just paint any way they want. It’s a very distinct formula. What colors go first, second, and third? What brushes or sponges are used to apply colors at every application?”
As she explains, there’s even a special technique for the application, which LeWitt insiders refer to as “boom booming.” When the artist, who passed in 2007, was alive, says Beckman, “one of his studio assistants was left-handed, just like the famous boxer Boom Boom Mancini, and so a specific sponge application is referred to as ‘boom booming’ in the painting instructions.”
The Picasso Ceramics
Fabiola Beracasa Beckman’s paternal grandmother, Alegría Beracasa, a patron of the arts, was among the first Venezuelans to commission Gio Ponti to build a home in Caracas. “I spent countless days of my childhood immersed in that Ponti-designed space and art-filled home,” she says. (In an ironic twist, when she met photographer Simon Upton while he was shooting her story for AD, he recognized her last name and asked if she was related to Alfredo, her father. It turns out he had photographed their family home in Venezuela twenty years ago.)
Alegría collected Picasso ceramics, and when she passed away, the collection was passed on to Alfredo—who added to it—and then to Beracasa Beckman. “We knew the dining room would be a very special place to showcase these beautiful family heirlooms,” she says. Currently, she has 33 plates on display, grouped by color.
Not long ago, Beracasa Beckman invited Diana Picasso, the artist’s granddaughter, to lunch at the house. Picasso was impressed that they were bought directly from the artist in Vallauris, France. “We did some digging and discovered our grandparents were friends, which was surreal,” Beracasa Beckman says. “There we were, a few generations later, still two friends meeting for lunch.”
The San Patrignano Wall Coverings
Beracasa Beckman’s mother was close to the legendary decorator Renzo Mongiardino, who decorated their family’s home on New York’s Fifth Avenue. One of Mongiardino’s go-to textile sources was San Patrignano, founded in Italy in 1978, which—with his collaboration—became famous worldwide for its artistry. Beracasa Beckman knew she wanted to collaborate with the workshop for her own home one day and kept tabs on the business over the ensuing decades. The walls of her living room are now sheathed in the workshop’s hand-painted marquetry. “I had been waiting to use [the wood marquetry] for what feels like a lifetime,” she says.
The homeowner also turned to San Patrignano for her bedroom, which overlooks the back garden’s mature trees. “My husband and I wanted to continue the feeling of the garden into the bedroom, so while looking for references, I came across a room that Renzo did for Contessa Cristina Brandolini in this green San Patrignano wallpaper, and fell in love,” she says. Referencing images of that bedroom and swatches from San Patrignano, she began creating her own version. “The green makes it feel like a true sanctuary,” she says.
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