Donald Sultan

A sculptor, printmaker, and painter, Donald Sultan was born in Asheville, NC in 1952. He earned a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and his Masters from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York in 1975.

Once in New York, Sultan became one of the major proponents of the New Image movement, alongside contemporaries Susan Rothenberg and Julian Schnabel. Although his works are primarily classified as “minimalist” and “still lifes”, Sultan maintains that his style is first and foremost abstract. This style is in keeping with the New Image movement, however – his simplified representations of objects (flowers, buttons, etc.) are most always disassociated from their backgrounds.

Today, Sultan’s works – paintings, prints, and sculptures alike – may be found in the collections of over fifty major museums across the globe, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Modern (London), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), among others. The artist still lives and works in New York.