Pina Bausch, Europe’s most influential modern dance choreographer, has died at the age of 68.

The announcement of her sudden death was made by the director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater, the Germany dance company founded by Bausch in 1973. It’s been reported that Bausch was recently diagnosed with cancer.

Germany’s leading choreographer was one of the world’s most provocative and adored dance-makers, whose brave and imaginative productions were admired by visual artists, actors and directors as well as dance fans. Never one to take the easy option, she devoted her life to looking for truth in art, and she was uncompromising in how she pursued that objective.

Traditionalists may have been offended, but there was a whole world out there eager for her unique brand of theatrical psychological investigations.

Her productions often eschewed any kind of narrative logic and downplayed the role of sophisticated movement. Instead they stressed the expression of painful emotions - such as alienation, anguish, cruelty, melancholy, futility and frustration. Yet tenderness could co-exist with violence in her work. She admitted that she wasn’t interested in how people move, but “in what moves them”. As an artist, she was the ultimate people watcher.

In Arien she covered the stage with water; in Viktor she placed the action inside a gigantic earthwork grave; in Nelken she covered the stage with thousands of carnations; in Rite of Spring the dancers performed on tons of peat. Her choreography was often obsessive and relentless, but it could also speak potently of the bleakness of the human condition or make us laugh with its wry observations of our common foibles.

Her impact on modern dance theatre is incalculable, and an entire generation of choreographers has grown up seeking to emulate her distinctive aesthetic. You can even see her influence in the work of theatre and film directors. One of the latter, Pedro Almodovar, paid tribute to her work in his Oscar-winning film Talk to Her.

In the wake of her death, there will be many more tributes, but perhaps Alistair Spalding, the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells, where Bausch’s company regularly appeared to sold-out houses, summed it up best: “She was an artist of the kind that the world is only blessed with from time to time.”

Editor's choice

• Alicia Keys lets rip
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes