Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss (28 March 1928 – 20 November 2022) was a Swedish

costume designer A costume designer is a person who designs costumes for a film, stage production or television show. The role of the costume designer is to create the characters' outfits or costumes and balance the scenes with texture and colour, etc. The costum ...

scenic design Scenic design, also known as stage design or set design, is the creation of scenery for theatrical productions including Play (theatre), plays and Musical theatre, musicals. The term can also be applied to film and television productions, wher ...

er, sculptor, ceramist, and actress. She won the 1966

Tony Award for Best Costume Design These are the winners and nominees for the Tony Award for Best Costume Design. The award was first presented in 1947 and included both plays and musicals. In 1961, and since 2005 the category was divided into Costume Design in a Play and Costu ...

for her work on

Peter Weiss Peter Ulrich Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German writer, painter, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays ''Marat/Sade'' and '' The Investigation'' and h ...

's ''

Marat/Sade ''The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade'' (), usually shortened to ''Marat/Sade'' (), is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss. The work was firs ...

'' (1963). She has designed sets and costumes for numerous theaters internationally, including the

Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratf ...

and the

Royal Swedish Opera Royal Swedish Opera () is an opera and ballet company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Location and environment The building is located in the centre of Sweden's capital, Stockholm, in the borough of Norrmalm (borough), Norrmalm, on the eastern si ...

. From 1966 to 1989, she worked regularly as a set and costume designer for

Ingmar Bergman Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film and theatre director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time, his films have been described as "profoun ...

. She also collaborated as a designer with directors

Fritz Kortner Fritz Kortner (born Fritz Nathan Kohn, 12 May 1892 – 22 July 1970) was an Austrian stage and film actor and theatre director. Life and career Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn into a Jews, Jewish family. He studied at the Vien ...

and

Peter Brook Peter Stephen Paul Brook (21 March 1925 – 2 July 2022) was an English theatre and film director. He worked first in England, from 1945 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from 1947 at the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shak ...

Biography

Born Gunilla Palmstierna on 28 March 1928 in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

, Switzerland, Palmstierna-Weiss grew up in the Netherlands and Austria. Her parents, Kule Palmstierna and Vera Herzog, worked as physicians, and her grandfather,

Erik Palmstierna Erik Kule Palmstierna (10 November 1877 – 22 November 1959) was a Swedish Social Democratic Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, ...

, was foreign minister in Sweden's first social democratic government. Her mother is of Jewish descent. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she lived in Rotterdam and Berlin with her mother during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. After the war, she studied art in Amsterdam and Paris before moving to Sweden where she has remained since. From 1948 to 1952, she was married to the Swedish graphic artist Mark Christopher Sylwan. In 1964 she married German writer, painter, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker

. They remained married until his death in 1982. Palmstierna-Weiss began her career as a ceramist in the late 1940s and 1950s. She began a romantic relationship with Weiss after the end of her first marriage, and that relationship led to a new artistic interest initially in acting and then scenic and costume design where her artistic focus ultimately settled. She appeared as an actress in several of Weiss's early experimental films. She won a Tony Award in 1966 for her costume designs in Weiss's ''

'', which were later used in the 1967 film version directed by

. In 2009, she was awarded the

Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (, or , BVO) is the highest state decoration, federal decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It may be awarded for any field of endeavor. It was created by the first List of president ...

. Palmstierna-Weiss died in Stockholm on 20 November 2022, at the age of 94.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Palmstierna-Weiss, Gunilla 1928 births 2022 deaths Swedish costume designers Swedish people of Jewish descent Tony Award winners Women scenic designers Women costume designers Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany