Donald Sultan (b. 1951, Asheville, North Carolina) is a distinguished contemporary American painter, sculptor, and printmaker who rose to prominence in the late 1970s as a key figure in the "New Image" movement. He is best known for creating monumental, textured works that elevate traditional subjects like still life and landscape through the use of unconventional, industrial materials.
Sultan's signature style is defined by a bold aesthetic that creates a powerful tension between the fragility of his subjects and the severity of his materials.
Dissatisfied with traditional canvas and paint early in his career, Sultan began using industrial building materials for his works. His large compositions are often constructed on a substrate of Masonite or vinyl tiles and feature heavy layers of materials such as roofing tar, spackle, linoleum, and enamel.
His technique is labor-intensive, involving gouging, sanding, and buffing the surface to create flatness, depth, and a unique, tactile texture. He often applies black tar to outline and emboss his chosen forms, creating a stark, unsettling, and dominant tar-black background.
While his paintings depict recognizable subjects like lemons, poppies, dominoes, and smokestacks, Sultan asserts that his work is first and foremost abstract. He breaks down these subjects into simplified geometric and organic forms, emphasizing the composition's structure and giving equal weight to both the negative (background) and positive (subject) spaces. He has described his work as "heavy structure, holding fragile meaning."
Sultan received his BFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York in 1975, where he continues to live and work.
His work is included in the permanent collections of over fifty major museums globally, including:
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Tate Modern, London
The Art Institute of Chicago
Sultan has also enjoyed a distinguished career as a printmaker and sculptor and has received the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts, among numerous other honors.