The Harmony of Form

written by Maria Carolina Mitchell

Sophia Vari, born Sophia Cannellopoulos (Vari, 1940 – Monte Carlo, 2023), was a Greek artist of Greek and Hungarian descent. A cultured and sophisticated figure, she lived between Paris, Athens, New York, and Pietrasanta. Her works – exhibited in numerous solo shows across the globe – are renowned for their balance of archaic form and modern sensibility, of classical mythology and contemporary abstraction.

A pivotal moment in her life occurred at the age of seventeen, when she met the legendary Maria Callas. It was this encounter that gave her the courage to pursue her artistic calling and to convince her parents to allow her to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Immersed in the cultural ferment of the French capital, she began to develop her own pictorial language, drawing from modernist sensibilities and exploring cubist and surrealist expressionism – though neverfully aligning with any particular movement. Through extensive travel, she absorbed the influence of diverse artistic traditions: from Egypt, the imposing presence of ancient statuary; from Italy, the classical harmony of Piero della Francesca and the Mannerism of Giambologna’s sculpture. Her journeys to Latin America, spurred by her relationshipwith Fernando Botero, introduced her to the visual languages of the Mayan and Olmec civilizations. Despite the rich interplay of cultures and epochs evident in her work, Vari always asserted her Greek heritage—through her formal rigor and reverence for beauty rooted in classical, particularly Cycladic, art, as well as in the choice of her professional name,Vari, after the village near Athens where she was born.

“At the time, I was proud to be Greek. The admiration I had for the materials I saw in Greek art— marble and bronze – along with its technical perfection and ancient devotion to beauty, left an indelible impression on me”

In the early stages of her career, Sophia Vari explored two-dimensional representation, focusing on volume and thesolidity of the body, inspired by Rubens’ voluptuous figures. Over time, she realized she was “a sculptor who paints” andthat clay, rather than the brush, was her truest medium. Through sculpture, she continued her spatial explorations withoutrelying on painterly devices or trompe-l’oeil illusions: the volumes of her forms, no longer confined to the flatness of thecanvas, took on tangible, physical presence. The final phase of her stylistic evolution marked a shift toward abstraction: no longer figures but pure forms, which twist and coil in space – first echoing the human figure, later becoming purely self-referential forms. Yet abstraction, for Vari, was not a renunciation of the sensory world, but its sublimation. She shaped matter by studying its lines of tension, playing with contrast, maintaining equilibrium between the exuberance of form and the restraint of composition. Her sculptures are not designed for frontal viewing, but invite exploration from every angle, transforming as the viewer moves. Nor are they made for visual contemplation alone – they are tactile, material works, calling to be touched.

“Je ne dessine pas, je ne peux pas m’exprimer avec un crayon, j’ai besoin de toucher”

It was when she liberated herself from the figure that Sophia Vari began to explore jewelry. She always traveled not with a sketchbook, but with a small clay tile to model. One day, one of these became her first piece of jewelry. At the time,she was teaching painting in her Paris studio when, by a stroke of luck, one of her students happened to be a jeweler introduced her to a craftsman—thus beginning a decade-long collaboration. Initially intended for personal use, her jewelry would only later, in the final stage of her life, be presented as art objects. In an interview, Vari remarked that there is no difference between a sculpture and a piece of jewelry: both embody the same investigation into matter andvolume; both aspire to monumentality. She insisted on noble, time-resistant materials, to ensure her art preserved the same immortal beauty as that which inspired her: marble and bronze for sculptures; gold, silver, and ebony for her jewels.

From May 20 to September 12, 2025, BABS Art Gallery will host a solo exhibition of Sophia Vari— her first in Milan to bring together the artist’s sculptures, paintings, and jewelry. On display will be her Compositions and Abstractions, Cubist-inspired watercolors created between 2003 and 2006, during a period in which she returned to canvas and color to explore juxtapositions and overlays of geometric forms. In her work, the archaic and the avant-garde converge: hermodernist shapes evoke the aesthetics of Cycladic votive statues, while the names of her jewelry pieces recall themythological figures that inspired them. One such example is Carya-Minaudière, an evocation of Carya, the maiden transformed into a tree by a love-struck Dionysus. Similarly, Sophia’s clutch—crafted from ebony with gold details—becomes a miniature sculpture when set down. Also on view is the bracelet Eosophoros, named after the god “bringer oflight,” incarnation of the dawn, whose meaning takes physical form: made of gilt brass, its mirror-like surface captures and radiates the light that strikes it.

The name Sophia Vari encapsulates the essence of her creative journey: on one hand, the enduring cultural heritage of Greece; on the other, σοφία—the wisdom with which she forged her own expressive language. Deeply aware of the many influences that shaped her evolution—from ancient civilizations to the works of Hans Arp and Joan Miró—she allowed herself to be transformed by them, while preserving a profound coherence in her creative vision. For Sophia, it was essential that an artist claim their own identity, that they make their style their own, even if that meant a constant struggle. This exhibition stands as the culmination of a coherent and intentional artistic path, in which every influence has become an integral part of a unique and unmistakable language.