Gerd Winter was born in Groß-Gerau in 1951. From 1979 until 1984 he studied Painting at the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Art (Städelschule) under Hermann Nitsch, Ernst Caramelle, Peter Klasen and Bernd Jäger. He has been a member of the “Darmstädter Sezession” association since 1995.
In his works, Gerd Winter communicates moods and emotions to the viewer without specific pictorial content, solely through coloured structures and blended gradients. Whether designed as horizontal or vertical areas of colour or in spontaneous blends, concrete ideas are realised in painted pictorial designs.
Layer by layer, he applies, exposes or paints over patches of colour on wood or canvas, until a balanced pictorial composition has been achieved.
Alternating stringently geometric areas of colour with spontaneous blurring and blending, Gerd Winter creates dramatic tension between shape and colour as well as between surface and space.
As the 2005 winner of the Wilhelm-Loth Prize of the City of Darmstadt, his work was honoured with a highly acclaimed solo exhibition at the State Museum of Hesse in 2007. Winter’s works are part of numerous public collections, such as those of the State Museum of Hesse in Darmstadt, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, the State of Hesse as well as supra-regional institutions and corporate collections.