Born in Timisoara, Helmut Stürmer studied at the Nicolae-Grigorescu Academy of the Arts in Bucharest with Professor Paul Bortnovski. There he worked as a stage designer at the Teatrul Bulandra from 1968 to 1977.
Further positions followed in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Leipzig, as well as at the Vienna Festival, the Vienna Burgtheater and the opera houses in Basel, Karlsruhe and Nuremberg, where he worked with directors such as Andrei Serban, Leander Hausmann, Konstanze Lauterbach and Max Emanuel Cencic. In addition to numerous sets for theatre and opera projects, he created set designs for more than ten films.
In 1998 he returned to Romania, where he was honoured with an exhibition of his work in Sibiu in 2007. Among his many awards are the first prize of the Romanian Artists’ Association for best set design in 1974 and a nomination for Designer of the Year in 2004. He won the prize for best set design at the Hungarian Theatre Festival Pécs for Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida directed by Silviu Purcarete and the prize of the Romanian Theatre Union for best set design in 2007/08 for Goethe’s Faust.
Helmut Stürmer’s other works include the sets for Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Théâtre de l’Union in Limoges, Euripides’ The Bacchae at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Aeschylus’ Oresteia at the Norske Teatret Oslo, Rachmaninov’s operas Francesca da Rimini and Aleko at the Teatro Colòn in Buenos Aires and Artaserse by Leonardo Vinci at the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Opéra Royal de Versailles.
He also created the costume and stage designs for Ionescu’s Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Goethe’s Faust in Sibiu (Romania), and Eötvös’ Love and other Demons at the Glyndebourne Festival, which was also presented at the Lithuanian National Opera House Vilnius, Cologne Opera and Opéra du Rhin Strasbourg.
