Born in Asheville, North Carolina 1951 | Lives and works in New York and Sag Harbor, NY
Donald Sultan is best known for his minimalistic representations of fruit and flowers in a voluminous oeuvre of work that utilizes, and often combines, the media of painting, printing, and sculpting. The works' predominant feature is the large surfaces' abundant textures. Sultan examines the interface between the industrial and the organic by depicting flowers and fruit using industrial materials such as enamel, tar, vinyl tiles and industrial flock. He builds up thoroughly elegant paintings, which monumentalize subjects from still lives to such ephemera as the swirling of smoke rings. These works combine the artificial and industrial imagery so endemic to his work.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1973) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1975), Sultan held his first solo exhibition at Artist Space in New York in 1977. It marked the beginning of a series of large international exhibitions. Sultan's works are in many prestigious collections including the Tate Gallery London, Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, Singapore Art Museum, as well as New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, and The Art Institute of Chicago.
Galerie Forsblom has been representing Donald Sultan since 2003, yet the collaboration started as early as 1992.