Gunilla Palmstierna-White

Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss (2010)

Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss (born March 28, 1928 in Lausanne , Switzerland , as Gunilla Palmstierna) is a Swedish sculptor , ceramist , set designer and author . She was married to the German-Swedish author, playwright, painter and filmmaker Peter Weiss from 1964 until his death in 1982 . Between 1966 and 1989 she worked as a set and costume designer for the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman .

Life

Gunilla Palmstierna was born on March 28, 1928 to Swedish parents, Kule Palmstierna and Vera Herzog, both of whom are doctors, in Lausanne ( French-speaking Switzerland ). Palmstierna's grandfather Erik Palmstierna was foreign minister in Sweden's first social democratic government. On the maternal side, Palmstierna comes from a Jewish family of book printers who immigrated to Sweden in the 19th century . Gunilla Palmstierna spent her childhood and youth in Austria , France and Holland . After her parents' early divorce, Palmstierna spent the Second World War with her mother in Rotterdam and Berlin .

Palmstierna only came to Stockholm after studying art in Amsterdam and Paris . Gunilla Palmstierna gave up her field of ceramics in the 1960s in favor of the new focus on scenography (work with her partner Peter Weiss and Ingmar Bergman, among others). From 1948 to 1952 Palmstierna was married to the Swedish graphic artist Mark Christopher Sylwan. Gunilla Palmstierna and Peter Weiss had known each other since 1949, became a couple after Palmstierna's marriage to Mark Sylwan, but did not get married until 1964.

Although Gunilla Palmstierna emerged as an actress in several of Weiss' early experimental films ( Hägringen , Hallucinationer ), later her focus was on set design and equipment. In addition to Weiss and Bergman, she also worked with the directors Fritz Kortner and Peter Brook . She received a Tony Award in 1966 for her costume designs in Brook's Marat / Sade production, which were also used in the film version .

Her work has taken her to most of Europe , Southeast Asia , Japan and the United States . The " Voltaire Flight Nos. 23: Report on the attacks of the US Air Force and -Marine against the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam after the declaration President Johnson about the 'limited bombardment' on 31 March 1968" created in co-authorship in the context of Palmstierna and Weiss made a long journey through the theater of war in the summer of 1968.

Gunilla Palmstierna-White (2017)

After the death of Peter Weiss in 1982, she became one of his most important estate administrators and curated numerous exhibitions. In addition to her biographically determined knowledge of the history and development of Weiss' work in the field of tension between the two German states, she is considered to be the most intimate connoisseur, especially of the visual artistic legacy of the German-Swedish artist. Palmstierna-Weiss has contributed to numerous publications by and about Peter Weiss, such as the six-volume work on life and work ( Suhrkamp , 1991), the Copenhagen Journal ( Wallstein , 2006) and the Paris manuscript For each other we are ciphers ( Rotbuch , 2008) . In 1997 the Bochum Museum presented an exhibition on the stage design work of Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss.

Like Manfred Haiduk and Jürgen Schutte , Gunilla Palmstierna is an honorary member of the International Peter Weiss Society . In May 2009 she received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her outstanding service to German-Swedish relations . Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss now works as a freelance scenographer and writer in Stockholm.

Filmography (selection)

• 2003: The Unrelated: Peter Weiss - Life in Opposites
• 1998: Bertolt Brecht - love, revolution and other dangerous things
• 1991: Peter Weiss - An Exhibition
• 1967: Marat / Sade
• 1959: Hägringen
• 1953: Study III, 1953
• 1952: Study II Hallucinationer

literature

• Drama of a Lifetime: The Swedish Feminist (with Irene Armbruster). In: Structure . Zurich, issue 10/2008, p. 18ff. ISSN  0004-7813
• Minnets spelplats . Albert Bonniers, Stockholm 2013, ISBN 978-9-100-12598-1
• Museum Bochum and Kulturverein Ost West eV (Hrsg.): Scenography. Gunilla Palmstierna-White. February 22nd - April 6th 1997. Museum Bochum . OO 1997.
• Peter Weiss. Life and work. An exhibition. Akademie der Künste, Berlin February 24 to April 28, 1991 . Edited by Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss and Jürgen Schutte . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991.
• Peter Weiss. Works in six volumes . Edited by Suhrkamp Verlag in collaboration with Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991.

Web links

• Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss Ingmar Bergman Foundation
• Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss Mediathek Peter-Weiss-Haus Rostock