Sculptor Jackie Winsor, known for labor-intensive works that used raw materials and built on Minimalist forms, has died at 82. Her death, caused by a stroke, was confirmed by her sisters, Maxine Holmberg and Gloria Christie, and her representing gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery.
Born in 1942 in St. John’s, Canada, Winsor grew up assisting her father, a carpenter and engineer, with construction projects. These formative experiences would later influence her highly manual practice. In 1952, her family moved to the United States, where she later earned her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. It wasn’t until she enrolled at Rutgers University for her MFA in 1965 that she began experimenting with sculpture.
At Rutgers, Winsor befriended fellow artists Joan Snyder and Keith Sonnier, the latter of whom she married in 1966. The three moved to New York in 1967 after graduating. There, Winsor made process-oriented sculptures from materials such as tubes, cords, human hair, and rope. Some works called back to her childhood, such as Nail Piece (1970), in which seven pine boards adorned with nails are reminiscent of the wooden porch the artist once constructed with her father. Winsor’s work from this period is often associated with that of Postminimalist sculptors like Richard Tuttle, Eva Hesse, and Lynda Benglis.
Winsor’s career gained significant traction in the 1970s. She participated in four Whitney Biennials between 1973 and 1983. During this time, she became a regular fixture at Paula Cooper Gallery, then a key venue for Minimalist art. By 1979, Winsor’s achievements were celebrated with a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art—the museum’s first retrospective of a woman artist since 1946.
During the 1980s, Winsor’s exploration of materials evolved as she began incorporating color into her cement and wooden sculptures. She adorned cement wall fixtures, such as Inset Wall Piece White with Red Interior, (1988–89), with red acrylic paint, and coated others, such as Gold Piece (1987), in gold leaf.
Winsor’s work is in the collections of major institutions, including MoMA, the Whitney, the Walker Art Center, and the Stedelijk Museum. In the last decade of her career, she was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, in 2014, and at MAMCO Genève in Switzerland, in 2022.
