Robert Wilson (1941-2025)

Robert Wilson (1941–2025) is considered one of the major figures in contemporary artistic creation. Born in Waco, Texas, he studied at the University of Texas and then at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, before furthering his training under the painter George McNeil and the architect Paolo Soleri. These formative experiences shaped a practice in which architecture, drawing, light, and scenography have remained inseparable. In 1968, he founded the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds in New York, an experimental collective that marked the beginning of a body of work that would profoundly transform contemporary theatre.

During the 1970s, Robert Wilson established himself on the international scene with now-foundational works such as Deafman Glance (1970), The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973), A Letter for Queen Victoria (1974), and Einstein on the Beach (1976), created with Philip Glass. These performances profoundly renewed the theatrical language by prioritising rhythm, visual composition, slowness, and light over traditional narrative. Time became a material in its own right.

Alongside his work as a theatre director, Robert Wilson developed an autonomous visual art practice from the 1960s onwards. Drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations, and video portraits form a coherent body of work in which the image functions as a silent score. Working primarily in graphite, charcoal, and ink, he developed series based on repetition, variation, and precision of gesture. His works on paper now occupy an essential place in his artistic career and are held in numerous international public collections.

Furniture occupies an equally fundamental place in his work. For Robert Wilson, a chair is never simply a functional object but a true performer. Initially conceived for the stage, his furniture quickly acquired sculptural autonomy and became works in their own right. Among his most important creations are the Hamletmachine Chair, the Pierre Curie Chair, the Bessie Smith Chair, the Einstein on the Beach Chair, and the Father's Chair, designed for The Days Before: Death, Destruction & Detroit III. Reissued in 2022 in black, white, and red lacquered wood, in a limited edition of six examples per colour, the latter is one of the major works in his design corpus. The twenty-five drawings devoted to this chair testify to the central role that furniture occupies in his visual vocabulary.

In 1992, Robert Wilson founded The Watermill Center in Water Mill, New York, an interdisciplinary laboratory dedicated to contemporary creation. Today, the centre houses his archives and a significant collection of works, while hosting artists in residence from around the world. More than an art centre, Watermill embodies the synthesis of his thinking, where theatre, visual arts, architecture, music, dance, and design engage freely in dialogue.

Robert Wilson’s works are now held in the collections of leading international institutions, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, Centre Pompidou, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Vitra Design Museum. Galerie Ketabi Bourdet continues its research into his visual art and furniture, notably through the exhibition The Days Before, realised in collaboration with the artist’s Estate, which sheds light on a still largely overlooked aspect of his artistic legacy.