 He was born in Genoa and turned to drawing in 1938 when, as a son of a Jew (from the part of his father), his academic studies were interrupted by the introduction of the Fascist racial laws.He moved to Switzerland with his family and studied in Lausanne, where he obtained his degree at the local École des Beaux-Arts.He designed his first production of "Solomon and the Queen of Sheba" in 1944, a collaboration with his friends Alessandro Fersen, Aldo Trionfo and Guido Lopez.