Greenaway, Peter

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Greenaway, Peter

Greenaway, Peter, Welsh film director, writer, painter, and librettist; b. Newport, April 5, 1942. He went to England and studied at the Walthamstow Coll. of Art. From 1965 to 1976 he worked as a film editor in the Central Office of Information. His first exhibition of paintings was mounted in 1964, and his first one-man show was held in Canterbury in 1989. As a film director and writer, he began producing short films in 1966 and feature-length films in 1978, all highly structured, visu-ally complex, and elaborate; among the most well-known are The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1990), Prospero’s Books (1991), and The Pillow Book (1991). His book The Falls appeared in 1993. He collaborated with Louis Andriessen as librettist for the operas Rosa (Amsterdam, Nov. 2, 1994) and Writing to Vemeer (1997-99; Amsterdam, Dec. 1, 1999). Greenaway was made a Chevalier de 1’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1990.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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