Jackie Winsor
1941–2024
Jackie Winsor’s sculptures inflect the primary geometric language of Minimalism with a singular aesthetic that derives from handmade processes, human scale, and ordinary and organic materials. Initially trained as a painter, Winsor began making three-dimensional works in the late 1960s using rope, nails, wood, bricks, and copper wire, often crafting their forms via repetitive, manual actions such as wrapping, stacking, and hammering. These materials and techniques aligned with a Postminimalist interest in process and duration, but also derived from Winsor’s upbringing on the coast of Newfoundland, where her engineer father built houses.
In Cement Piece, which was included in the 1977 Whitney Biennial, Winsor constructed a three-foot cube from wood lath and wire-reinforced concrete. Small square portals cut into the center of each of its six sides allow viewers to peer into the center of the form. Winsor’s use of the cube, a shape that dominates her sculpture from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, was in part inspired by a dream in which she dug into a spot of light on her studio wall until she broke through to the adjacent space. As the dream suggests, the “neutral” form of the cube allowed her to address relationships between positive and negative space. For Winsor, the cube-shaped sculptures focus on “creating a balance between the physical grid and an intangible grid—bringing openness and airiness into the pieces and still retaining their solidity.” They take on a monumental Minimalist form, only to open it up and reveal its interior.
Introduction
Sculptor used a variety of materials to create her work. She emerged in New York alongside the Minimalists during the 1970s.
Country of birth
Canada
Roles
Artist, sculptor
ULAN identifier
500077642
Names
Jackie Winsor, Jacqueline Winsor, Jacque Winsor
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed December 18, 2025.
