The New Image Painting movement emerged during the late 1970s as a reaction agains the domanence of Minimalism and Conceptural art. Sultan reintroduced recognizable imagery into painting, whilst maintaining conceptual concerns surrounding the notion of the picture plane. Rather than returning the traditional realism, New Image painters used bold colours and fragemented compositions to create works that felt symbolic and focused on developed a new iconography. Donald Sultan’s large-scale still-life paintings feature semi-abstract compositions and unique materials: The artist has used tar, spackle, enamel, Masonite, and vinyl floor tiles to create his minimalist renderings of flowers, fruits, and other natural forms. Sultan received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he began to experiment with non-traditional painting methods. Sultan’s work is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, among others. Sultan is well known for his extensive printmaking practice.

Public Collections

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont
Australian National Gallery, Canberra
Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas
Denver Art Museum, Denver
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla
Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington
Ludwig Museum, Budapest
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City
Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Mint Museums, Charlotte
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis
Tate Gallery, London
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York