“Brief but severe illness …”: a very popular theater icon in France is dead

He bowed out as he lived: with discretion but an indelible imprint. Similarly, The director Robert Wilson. Furthermore, an essential figure in the theater contemporary, died at the age of 83 Thursday July 31, 2025, “After a brief but severe illness”, According to a press release from his Watermill art center in New York.

For many. However, he was much more than a man of stage: a total creator, a visionary, a master of images and silence. Furthermore, With its disappearance, it is a monumental page of living art that turns. Meanwhile, Born in Waco. In addition, Texas, in 1941, Robert Wilson was not intended to become one of the most influential artists of his generation. Meanwhile, Bègue in a conservative America. Furthermore, he owes his personal surpassing to a dance teacher, Bird “Baby” Hoffman, and to a visceral instinct for creation.

“brief but severe illness …”:

Robert Wilson died at the age of 83 – "brief but severe illness …":

Very early on, he refused the limits. Architect by training, he joined in his works dance, music, light, scenography, painting … until creating what criticism will later call the “images theater”.

From 1970, with The deaf lookhe upsets the contemporary scene. Presented in Nancy in 1971, the spectacle lasts Seven hours. No word. Just living paintings, of a hypnotic slowness, which suspend time. Aragon will say that he “Nothing seen more beautiful since [qu’il est] nor “. France, precisely, will play a key role in its international recognition. “I owe a lot to France”, he confided to Figaro In 2019.

His collaborations with the greatest

His collaboration with the composer Philip Glass for the Opera Einstein on the. Beach (1976) marks a turning point. Four acts, nine scenes, no classic narration … but a striking universe. Robert Wilson Repousse The boundaries “brief but severe illness …”: of dramaturgy. allow themselves all audacity: The traviata, Madame Butterfly, Pelléas and Mélisandebut also Beckett, Brecht, Goethe, The fountain or Person.

His style: huge sets, a chopped light like a brush, static, slow, almost unreal characters. Far from any realism. Its influence extends far beyond the theater. He works with Lou Reed, David Byrne, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson. He rubs shoulders with Susan Sontag, William Burroughs. Additionally, He inspires a whole generation of artists, from Patrice Chéreau to Georges Lavaudant. Even his detractors recognize in him an unclassifiable esthete. His latest creation in Paris. Person, since I’m ben mewas a minimalist and poetic tribute to the Portuguese master, carried by Maria de Medeiros.