“Lila De Nobili Dream Materials”: From Theatre and Opera to Painting-The Errikos Sofras Collection

The οther Arcadia Foundation presents the exhibition Lila De Nobili, Dream Materials: Theatre – Opera – Painting. From The Errikos Sofras Collection, hosted at 16 Fokionos Negri, Athens. The exhibition will run from 10 December 2025 to 7 February 2026. The opening reception will take place on Wednesday, 10 December, from 18:00 to 21:00.

Lila De Nobili (1916–2002) was one of the most important set and costume designers of the second half of the 20th century. Born in Switzerland to an Italian noble father and a Hungarian Jewish mother, she studied painting in Rome and Paris, where she eventually settled. She contributed to landmark productions in theatre, opera, and dance, creating sets that defy simple description -works of sheer magic and poetry. She collaborated with major European stages and legendary figures such as Luchino Visconti and Maria Callas, Édith Piaf and Ingrid Bergman, Franco Zeffirelli and Peter Hall, Audrey Hepburn and Laurence Olivier.

Although she had received academic artistic training in Rome and Paris, and although her participation as a set and costume designer in major productions lasted only twenty years, her devotion to painting endured throughout her life. Beyond her purely pictorial works, one can easily see that every stage or costume maquette she created possesses rare painterly qualities.

For the past 25 years, Errikos Sofras has studied and collected her work. The exhibition Lila De Nobili, Dream Materials: Theatre – Opera – Painting. From The Errikos Sofras Collection features set and costume maquettes from twelve significant theatre and opera productions, as well as paintings and drawings.

Among them: Maquettes from the elegiac 1955 Traviata at La Scala, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Maria Callas, a production that changed forever the way we perceive opera. The masterfully painted maquette for Le Bel Indifférent by Cocteau, written for Piaf and performed by her. Three maquettes from the monumental 1965 Carmen at the Paris Opera, created for the 100th anniversary of its composition. Costume maquettes from Peter Hall’s productions of Shakespeare. Finally, five maquettes from Manon Lescaut at the Spoleto Festival in 1973, Visconti’s last operatic staging after he had been severely affected by a stroke.

The exhibition also includes paintings and large-scale folding screens. Highlights include:
The Girl in Formal Dress (the largest known work by de Nobili), the four-figure dreamlike folding screen (from the Giroud Collection), works portraying her close friend and companion Yannis Tsarouchis, and haute couture illustrations from the years when she created fashion plates for major fashion houses in French Vogue. Archival material-photographs, letters, theatre programmes, illustrated editions, and more-will also be on display.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue-book containing all exhibited works and texts by Errikos Sofras and Sotiris Felios.