Pieak Poster

Somboonsuk Niyomsiri was born on 18 October 1932 in Chiang Mai, when the country was still officially known as Siam. He showed an early interest in painting and trained at the Poh-Chang Academy of Arts in Bangkok (now part of Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin).

By his late teens he was painting advertisements. In the early 1950s a movie promoter asked him to paint actors for cinema billboards, which launched the career that gave him the professional name Pieak Poster (เปี๊ยก โปสเตอร์).

From 1953 he worked as a film-poster artist, eventually creating posters for more than 1,000 Thai and foreign films. His hand-painted, montage-style work became a familiar sight outside Thai cinemas. One remembered commission was the Thai poster for The Last Sunset (1961), shown at Sala Chaloem Thai on Ratchadamnoen Avenue.

He began directing in 1970 with Tone, a low-budget drama that became a box-office surprise and a landmark of Thailand's 35mm filmmaking. Duang (1971) and Choo (1972) followed and, with Tone, are often grouped as classics. Wai Onlawon (1976) helped set off a wave of youth-oriented Thai films. Something About Art (1988) and its sequel focused on Silpakorn University art students. He later served as second-unit director on The Legend of Suriyothai (2001). Sources credit him with roughly 29 to 32 film credits across directing and related roles, with his last feature as director in the mid-1990s.

He was also an early adopter of storyboarding in Thai cinema after a short internship at Daiei Film in Tokyo. In 2011 he acted in The Billionaire as Thueang, winning Best Supporting Actor at the Bangkok Critics Assembly Awards. In 2015 he was named a National Artist in the performing arts (film and television).

Pieak Poster was a key figure in preserving Thai film history. He sat on the committee that established the Thai Film Archive and in 1984 became its first donor of film reels, documents and filming equipment.

After retiring from filmmaking he settled in Pak Chong in Nakhon Ratchasima province and returned to painting portraits for clients. He told the Bangkok Post ahead of his National Artist honour that making movies had been a great ride, but that he was happy to do what he loved again.

Pieak Poster died peacefully of age-related causes at 1:15 p.m. on 24 September 2026, aged 93, twenty-four days short of his 94th birthday. The Facebook page Dara Phapphayon and Thai entertainment outlets announced the death the same day, and the Bangkok Post published an English-language remembrance.

He had lived in Pak Chong, Nakhon Ratchasima, in his later years. Detailed funeral arrangements were reported in Thai media as news of his death spread.

Pieak Poster is remembered both as the master craftsman behind a generation of hand-painted Thai film posters and as the director of Tone, Duang and Choo, films that helped define 1970s Thai cinema. His National Artist honour in 2015 recognised that double contribution to performing arts.

Through early donations to the Thai Film Archive he also left a practical legacy for film historians and future audiences. Thai outlets marking his death called him a guardian of the country's cinematic heritage as well as one of its most distinctive visual artists.