Biography of Terry Winters
The American artist Terry Winters is a bona fide original, capable of occupying that fascinating space between clarity and obscurity, beauty, and repetition. Born in New York in 1949, Winters rejected the strict Minimalism that was then the order of the day in favor of more figurative inspiration. Since the 1970s he has been exploring the expanded field of abstraction in his paintings, using forms of figuration drawn from the natural and technological worlds as sources of inspiration.
Throughout his career Terry Winters has always prioritized craftsmanship, maintaining a deeply hands-on approach to his art practice. Initially working out of sight of the art world, Winters would take botanical shapes and subject them to a process of abstraction, producing works ripe with ambiguity. He has said "My approach uses construction to provoke unpredictable, surprising images that emerge and become recognizable."
Always interested in the unconventional, Terry Winters extended this to exhibition spaces and his collaboration with Rem Koolhaas in 2001 even had paintings hanging from the ceiling. Excelling at painting, drawing, and printmaking, Winters' abstract processes recall mathematical concepts and cybernetics as well as natural and scientific worlds. In 1995 the artist published Ocular Proofs, a collection of drawings and notes that opened up the working practices of the artist, revealing the physicality of his painting techniques.
Increasingly in demand around the world, Winters had a major retrospective of his work in 1992 at the Whitney Museum of American Art that focused on his significance in the context of postmodern painting. Terry Winters has also major retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Irish Museum of Modern Art and solo shows at the Tate, in London in 1986. He is in the permanent collections of the Tate and the Saatchi Collection, both in London, and of MoMA and the Whitney, both in New York.
Throughout his career Winters has always prioritized craftsmanship, maintaining a deeply hands-on approach to his art practice. Initially working out of sight of the art world, Winters would take botanical shapes and subject them to a process of abstraction, producing works ripe with ambiguity. Winters has said "My approach uses construction to provoke unpredictable, surprising images that emerge and become recognizable."
Always interested in the unconventional, Winters extended this to exhibition spaces and his collaboration with Rem Koolhaas in 2001 even had paintings hanging from the ceiling. Excelling at painting, drawing, and printmaking, Winter's abstract processes recall mathematical concepts and cybernetics as well as natural and scientific worlds. In 1995 Winters published Ocular Proofs, a collection of drawings and notes that opened up the working practices of the artist, revealing the physicality of his painting techniques.
Increasingly in demand around the world, Winters had a major retrospective of his work in 1992 at the Whitney Museum of American Art that focused on his significance in the context of postmodern painting. He has also major retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Irish Museum of Modern Art and solo shows at the Tate, in London in 1986. He is in the permanent collections of the Tate and the Saatchi Collection, both in London, and of MoMA and the Whitney, both in New York.
