Robert Wilson (Waco, Texas, 1941) is one of the greatest and most important avant-garde stage directors of his generation. Combining text, movement, dance, lighting, music and art in his work for the theatre, he is lauded the world over for his aesthetic and emotionally charged images. As well as directing, he also works in the visual arts and in video. Many consider him to be the greatest lighting artist of our modern times. Wilson studied business administration at the University of Texas, then moved to New York in 1963 to study architecture and painting. In 1968 he founded his first experimental theatre company, the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, creating his first distinctive 'Wilson' performances, including Deafman Glance (1970). In the early 1970’s he stretched out into opera. In 1975 he and composer Philip Glass created Einstein on the Beach, a radically new approach to opera, bringing both men instant fame as serious artists. Since then, Wilson has worked with many great writers and musicians, including Heiner Müller, Tom Waits, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs, Lou Reed and Jessye Norman. He has staged masterpieces such as Puccini's Madame Butterfly, Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande, Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera, Büchner's Woyzeck and Homer's Odyssey.
His theatrical works are noted for their austere style, sublime lighting, slow moving scenes and great accuracy in text and gesture as well as often extreme scale. The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973) was a 12-hour performance; KA MOUNTain and GUARDenia Terrace (1972) was staged on a mountaintop in Iran and lasted seven days. The surrealist artist Louis Aragon praised Wilson’s work as: ‘What we, from whom Surrealism was born, dreamed would come after us and go beyond us’. Wilson's drawings, paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in hundreds of solo and group shows all around the world. He is a recipient of many awards, including an Obie, the Premio Europa and the third Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement. For his sculptures he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and knighted in the French order of 'Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres'. Robert Wilson is the founder of The Watermill Center, an interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts and humanities on Long Island, in the state of New York.