Born in 1951 in Asheville, North Carolina, Donald Sultan rose to prominence in the 1980's as a painter and draftsman of subjects such as lemons and flowers. He is best known for his rich use of black, actually tar in many of his paintings, and his work is voluminous and varied, manifesting itself in the media of paint, printing, and sculpting.

Sultan received his BFA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago*. He moved to New York in 1975, where he lives and works.

His still-lifes have been described as studies in contrast. Powerfully sensual, fleshy objects are rendered through a labor-intensive and unique method. Instead of canvas, Sultan works on masonite covered with 12-inch vinyl floor tiles. The tiles dictate the format: one-foot squares, eight-foot squares, or four-foot squares. Sultan cuts the shapes he desires into the vinyl, fills in the cutout space with plaster and/or tar, and then paints over it. These multiple layers create the texture and subsequent richness.

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, may be set against a stark, unsettling tar-black background and tend to dominate the viewer.

He is best known for his lemons and fruit, but has stated that his subjects develop from previous work. The oval of his lemons has led him to a series of oval-blossomed tulips, and dots from dice that have become oranges. Sultan's work incorporates basic geometric and organic forms, and his images are weighty, with equal emphasis on both negative and positive areas. Sultan describes his work as "heavy structure, holding fragile meaning" with the ability to "turn you off and turn you on at the same time."

Sultan has enjoyed a distinguished career as painter, print maker, and sculptor, including works of garden pieces. His work is always concerned, on some level at least, with recognizable imagery. "Basically I think I am a Minimalist*. But I keep trying to add as much stuff as I can and still keep the sense."

Sultans first one man show was in 1977, and since then he has been given numerous exhibitions dedicated to his work, as well as having been included in a number of group shows. His works have been collected and shown by leading galleries and museums around the world, and his international one- artist exhibitions include shows in Barcelona, Budapest, Dusseldorf, London, Nagoya, Paris, Rome, Tokyo and Zurich. He has been a Visiting Artist at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and collaborated with the playwright David Mamet on the book, Bar Mitzvah.



* For more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com Glossary http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx

DONALD KEITH SULTAN (BORN 1951)

The son of creative parents, Donald Sultan grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. His father, whose hobby was painting in an Abstract Expressionist mode, owned a tire company, which may have influenced the future artist’s interest in nontraditional industrial materials. His mother was active in the theater, and Sultan painted theatrical sets and acted in summer stock on Cape Cod as a teenager. After spending his high school years at the Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts, Sultan enrolled at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with the intention of studying theater. Reluctant to take acting direction, however, he transferred to the art department and earned his BFA from the university in 1973. He went on to the School of Art Institute of Chicago, completing his MFA two years later.

Living in the gritty urban environments of Chicago and New York inspired an early body of work, which dealt with factories and the industrial landscape. Sultan’s chosen media—black tar and linoleum—complemented this imagery. To support himself financially, he worked as a laborer renovating lofts in trendy neighborhoods and as a gallery assistant at the Denise René Gallery on 57th Street. After observing workmen lay new flooring, Sultan immediately adopted a grid format in place of canvas and began to incorporate tiles and spackle into his large-scale paintings.

Consistently working with tar and tiles, Sultan launched a series of fruits and flowers—most often lemons, poppies, and tulips—in the mid-1980s. The contrast of these natural organic shapes against his industrial materials and grid format is striking, and Sultan has described these works as pieces with “heavy structure, holding fragile meaning.” A more a recent series features dominos and dice. While clearly an heir to the Abstract Expressionists’ unconventional use and application of paint, Sultan vacillates between abstraction and representational art, and thus avoids easy categorization, leading some critics to simply label him as a “Post-Minimalist.”

Sultan had his first solo exhibition in 1977 at the Artists Space and has enjoyed significant New York gallery representation his entire career. The Museum of Modern Art mounted an exhibition of his black lemons in 1988, and in 1992 the American Federation of the Arts circulated a print retrospective to eight separate venues. Sultan’s work is represented in the permanent collections of major museums in this country and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Recognition has also come his way in the form of a 1980–1981 National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship. He is the recipient of three honorary doctorates: from Washington D.C.’s Corcoran School of Art in 2000; the New York Academy of Art in 2002; and the University of North Carolina, Asheville, in 2007.

The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
thejohnsoncollection.org

Donald Sultan was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and is an US-American painter, sculptor and graphic artist of Pop art and Abstract Expressionism. He is particularly well-known for his large-scale still life paintings and the use of industrial materials such as tar, enamel, spackle and vinyl tiles.

He has been exhibiting internationally in prominent museums and galleries, and his works are included in important museum collections all over the globe.

Sultan is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his artistic achievements. He lives on Long Island and in Paris. (cko)