Donald Sultan

The work of Donald Sultan is voluminous and varied. Since his first one-man show in 1977, he has enjoyed a distinguished career as painter, printmaker, and sculptor, known for large-scale still life paintings executed with bold contrasts of bright color and deep black forms, tight, nearly abstract compositions, and unorthodox media.

After earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Masters from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sultan moved to New York City in 1975 to pursue his career. Although his paintings fit into the criteria of a still life, Sultan describes these works as first and foremost abstract. The largeness of Sultan's compositions, huge pieces of fruit, flowers, dominoes and other objects, set against the stark, unsettling tar-black, eight-foot square background, dominate the viewer. He is best known for his lemons and fruit, and states that his subjects develop from previous work. The oval of his lemons has led to a series of oval-blossomed tulips. Dots from dice have become oranges. What does not change with Sultan's work is the powerful statement his forms make. Sultan's work incorporates basic geometric and organic forms with a formal purity that is both subtle and monumental. His images are weighty, with equal emphasis on both negative and positive areas. His work is featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.