From 1927 on Winter studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau with Klee, Kandinsky, and Schlemmer, but he soon distanced himself from their ideas and reached an increasing autonomy in his artistic work. In 1949 he was co-founder of the artist group ZEN 49 in Munich. He never completely renounced representation and intensely dealt with nature and its destructive and creative forces. He is one of the major proponents of abstraction in Europe.