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

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

Wilson’s career in theatre started in the late 1960s when he started the performance art group the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds in New York, named after a teacher who helped him with a stammer. He went on to create the four-act opera Einstein on the Beach with Philip Glass in the mid-1970s.

After the show toured Europe, Wilson wanted to put it on in New York and decided that