Robert Wilson, a renowned theatre director, playwright and artist, has died at the age of 83, the Guardian reports.

His death was confirmed by the Watermill Center, an arts center founded by Wilson in Water Mill, New York. He died peacefully after a "brief but acute illness."

Wilson's theatrical career began in the late 1960s when he founded the Byrd Hoffman School of Performance Art in New York City, named after a teacher who helped him with his stammer. In the mid-1970s, he created the four-act opera Einstein on the Beach with Philip Glass.

After the show toured Europe, Wilson wanted to stage it in New York and decided the Metropolitan Opera would be the best venue, but they turned him down, so he hired him himself. "It cost $90,000, a lot of money," he told the Guardian in 2012. "It sold out, so we did a second performance. It was a crazy mix of people who showed up, traditional opera goers and people who had never come before. We still ended up in debt, but those shows really established us." 

His works include silent operas such as The Deaf Gaze and the 12-hour The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin.

He has directed works by other authors, including William Shakespeare's King Lear and The Tempest and Anton Chekhov's Swan Song. Most recently he directed Ubu in Palma de Mallorca and Isabelle Huppert's Mary Said What She Said in London.

"Theatre is about one thing," the playwright said in 2019. "And if it's not about one thing - it's too complicated."

As a visual artist, Wilson has created sculptures, furniture designs and drawings. In 1993, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his sculptural work.

"I don't think I'm very good at explaining my work," he said in 2022, when he returned for the 57th Venice Biennale. "But it is something that is experienced."

Recognition for his talent includes the 1971 Drama Desk Award for directing, a Pulitzer Prize nomination for playwriting in 1986 and the 2013 Olivier Award for best opera. 

Among his many big-name collaborators are Tom Waits, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Martin McDonagh, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Tilda Swinton, Jim Jarmusch and Lady Gaga.

Wilson also worked with Gaga during her artpop era, designing the sets for her performance at the 2013 MTV Music Video Awards and using them in an exhibition at the Louvre. "The concentration, the power she has, is complete," he told the Guardian about Gaga in 2016.

BGNES recalls that in 2021. Wilson visited Bulgaria at the invitation of the Ivan Vazov National Theatre, where he is staging Shakespeare's The Tempest. | BGNES