American Minimal and Post-minimal Art, exemplified by artists such as Carl Andre, Robert Mangold, Richard Tuttle and Richard Artschwager, as well as the Italian Arte Povera from the 1960s with Mario Merz, Luciano Fabro and Gilberto Zorio, among others, form the basis for the collection of international contemporary art in the Kunst Museum Winterthur. It distinguishes itself through an emphasis on certain painters and sculptors. The Museum contains the most important group of paintings and drawings by the German artist Gerhard Richter in Switzerland, as well as singular sculptural ensembles by Richard Deacon, Isa Genzken, Thomas Schütte and Rita McBride. An extensive group of works by the American artist Matt Mullican pays attention to the so-called Pictures Generation, which combines conceptual traditions with the approach of appropriating mass media artistically and translating them into their own imagery.

Due to limited space, the collection of contemporary art is exhibited in rotating excerpts.