Donald Sultan

(American, b. 1951)

“Art has always grown with technology. Nothing is lost. People are creative, and people will keep creating.”
— Donald Sultan

Leading American contemporary still-life artist and distinguished painter, printmaker, and sculptor, Donald Sultan, creates artwork with distinctive textures and unusual touches, putting equal emphasis on positive and negative space. He was one of the first to artistically incorporate the use of industrial materials and tools alongside paint, such as tar, vinyl tile, enamel, butyl rubber, and spackling plaster. The results have been innovative and impressive. At least in his choice of materials, his approach can be seen as related to or an offshoot of the Process artists of the late 1960s, who used materials that were part of contemporary life. His large-scale images are primarily classified as still life, and while they do depict representational objects like lemons, flowers, and eggs, they are simultaneously abstract. “Most of my ideas were to put imagery back into abstract painting, … Some of the ones that look the most abstract are actually the most realistic,” explains the artist. Though his work covers a range of mediums, his process is often unique and labor intensive; finishing a single painting can take a month. To create his paintings he starts with plywood, glues linoleum tile to it then covers the tile in tar, which he scrapes away down to the tile in places, sometimes filling the space in with plaster, and finally drawing or painting on the resulting surfaces. Art critic Michael Brenson said in the New York Times of the paintings, “They mix together very different, seemingly incompatible elements… Positive and negative, charred and pristine, ripeness and decay all nestle together.” Another interesting point is that the paintings are made of the same materials as the building in which they are displayed, so architecture is a participating element. "Sultan pushes the boundaries of painting as he virtually sculpts the painting into pictures that are minimal but opulently rich," columnist R. Couri Hay observed, and as Calvin Tomkins put it in the New Yorker, “He builds pictures that release pleasing vibrations in the mind and the eye.”

Donald Sultan was born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1951, to artistic parents. His dad created abstract paintings as a hobby outside of owning a tire company, and his mom actively pursued theatre. He developed an interest in both theatre and art, but eventually chose art, earning a BFA at the University of North Carolina in 1973 and an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1975, experimenting with media, surface, and technique during his studies as traditional painting methods didn’t satisfy him. He married a girl from his hometown and after he finished his education, they moved to New York. They would have a daughter and a son, before eventually divorcing. In New York, Sultan found work building lofts with other artists during the day, and at night, he would paint. An art gallery hired him as a full-time handyman until 1978, and the next year he won a Creative Artists Public Service Grant of $2,500, worth $5,400 in 2020, enabling him to commit full-time to his art. His first solo exhibition was held at Artists Space in New York in 1977, and in the next two years, he was in group shows at Mary Boone Gallery and the Whitney Museum. As he started to exhibit, enough of his work sold for him to continue. Then it began to receive critical acclaim and attract media attention, and prominent galleries worldwide began to show his paintings, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, and Houston Museum of Contemporary Art in 1981. In 1987, he had solo exhibitions at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Brooklyn Museum, and Blum Helman Gallery in New York. His innovative work was done largely in two styles, both of which make strong statements – his signature bold, crisp, shapes, and a second darker, more menacing style often inspired by disastrous industrial events. In the 1980s, Sultan achieved art-world stardom with his paintings sometimes selling for upwards of $100,000, and acquiring prestigious gallery representation.

A hotel launching in 2000 aptly named Art'otel Budapest Donald Sultan, in Budapest, Hungary, invited the artist to permanently exhibit and design for them. They gave Sultan carte blanche to pretty much design everything - fountains, carpeting, terrycloth bathrobes, dishes, matchboxes, and so forth. “In the hotel's 165 rooms and suites, as well as in the hallways, guests will find 579 works, offering a comprehensive overview of Sultan's oeuvre," they say. The hotel also invites its guests "to trace the innovations Sultan introduced, opening up new directions to painting."

In addition to his paintings, Sultan has also been successful as a printmaker and sculptor. As a printmaker, he produces lithographs, serigraphs, woodcuts, linocuts, and etchings, his large-size aquatint etchings are particularly successful. Sultan was in the small group of American artists who would often work with Aldo Crommelynck, Picasso’s master-printer, the results of which are phenomenal.

In his sculpture, he also combines industrial materials like iron, lead, wood, and painted aluminum. Sultan has also produced limited edition artist's books that are now in museum collections worldwide, and a monograph on Sultan’s work was published in 2008, which includes 300 illustrations as well as essays by art historian and author Carter Ratcliff and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts curator John B. Ravenal.

With a spacious loft in the Tribeca district of Manhattan, an historic house in Long Island and a Paris apartment on the fashionable Rue Marbeuf, just off the Champs Elysees, Sultan spends his time between the three.

Sultan has shown work in prestigious galleries in France, Japan, the Russian Federation, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His works are in the permanent collections of over 50 major museums across the world, including the Honolulu Museum of Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Portland Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Reina Sofia in Madrid, Tate Modern in London, National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

His speaking engagements have included Harvard and Cornell universities, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn Museum, New York University, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Corcoran Museum of Art, University of Michigan, Boston University, Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Finland, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the American Federation of Arts, among others.

His notable achievements include receiving a Creative Artists Public Service Grant, New York, NY (1979), National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship (1980), Distinguished Alumnus Award from University of North Carolina (1992), and multiple Honorary doctorate degrees, from the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, D.C. (2000), the New York Academy of Art, NY (2002), and the University of North Carolina, Asheville (2007). He has also received the North Carolina Award for the Arts (2010), and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Houston Fine Art Fair, Houston, TX (2011).

American Fine Art, Inc. is proud to feature the original works and limited editions of Donald Sultan. Visit our 12,000 sq. ft. showroom in Scottsdale, Arizona or call today. Our website is offered only as a limited place to browse or refresh your memory and is not a reflection of our current inventory. To learn more about collecting, pricing, value, or any other art information, please contact one of our International Art Consultants. We look forward to giving you the one on one attention you deserve when building your fine art collection. We hope you find our website helpful and look forward to seeing you in Scottsdale soon.