Donald Sultan was born in 1951 in Asheville, North Carolina. He moved to New York in 1975, and his work is voluminous and varied. Since his first one-man show in 1977, Sultan has enjoyed a distinguished career as painter, printmaker, and sculptor. The largeness of Sultan's compositions — huge pieces of fruit, flowers, dominoes, and other objects set against the stark, unsettling tar-black backgrounds, dominate the viewer. Sultan is best known for his lemons and fruit, and he incorporates basic geometric and organic forms with a formal purity that is both subtle and monumental. 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's still lifes have been described as studies in contrast. His powerfully sensual, fleshy object representations are rendered through a labor-intensive printing method.

Sultan has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and group shows. His work is included in the permanent collections of institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.