Blues and Silvers
9 works
Donald Sultan Black Lemon on Silver, July 24 2018 For Sale
Donald Sultan
Black Lemon on Silver, July 24 2018, 2018
Color silkscreen with enamel inks and tar-like texture on 2-ply museum board
About this work
Donald Sultan's "Black Lemon on Silver, July 24 2018" presents a striking meditation on form, material, and the quiet power of familiar objects transformed through artistic vision. The singular black lemon dominates the composition, its rounded silhouette commanding attention against a luminous silver ground. The fruit's contour is at once recognizable and abstracted, reduced to an essential shape that hovers between representation and pure geometry. The tar-like texture Sultan employs adds a tactile dimension that photography alone cannot fully convey — a surface that absorbs light rather than reflecting it, creating a void-like presence that feels almost gravitational in its weight. The monochromatic palette establishes a compelling visual tension, the deep matte black pulling against the reflective silver backdrop in a dialogue of opposites. Light and dark, industrial and organic, absence and presence — these polarities animate the work without ever resolving into simple contrast. The enamel inks and museum board ground the piece in Sultan's signature fusion of fine art materials with industrial sensibilities. This work exemplifies Sultan's decades-long project of elevating humble subjects — lemons, tulips, buttons — into icons of contemporary art. By monumentalizing the everyday, he invites contemplation of objects we typically overlook, imbuing them with a solemnity and permanence that transforms perception. The dated title anchors the work in a specific moment while the image itself transcends time, achieving the timeless quality of a still life master translated through distinctly modern means. This work is available for acquisition through Guy Hepner, New York.
Price on Application
Edition & Provenance
- Year
- 2018
- Medium
- Color silkscreen with enamel inks and tar-like texture on 2-ply museum board
More from this series
More series by Donald Sultan
About the Lemons Series
Lemons | Donald Sultan | Guy Hepner, New York
Market Performance
Sultan's lemon works have achieved strong results at auction across multiple colourways. Black Lemon on Yellow and Yellow Lemon on Black have both achieved US$12,500. Eight Whites has realised US$10,802.
About the Series
The lemon is one of the great subjects of Western still life painting — from Chardin to Manet, a motif laden with centuries of art historical resonance. Sultan approaches it with the same combination of formal directness and material weight he brings to his botanical subjects.
His lemon works are among the most formally spare in his print production: the fruit rendered as near-geometric form against fields of contrasting colour, the tar-inflected surface giving each work an unusual density and physical presence. The series is particularly prized by collectors who respond to Sultan's more reductive mode.
About Donald Sultan
Donald Sultan
Market Performance and Investment Authority
Donald Sultan occupies a distinctive position in the American prints and editions market: an artist of the first rank whose secondary market has delivered consistent returns for collectors across four decades, with a depth of auction activity that demonstrates genuine global demand. His works have traded at Christie's, Sotheby's, Phillips, Bonhams, and specialist print sales worldwide, with a price range that reflects the breadth of his edition production.
Recent auction highlights demonstrate the strength across his series: Blues and Blacks has achieved US$24,308. The Double Poppies series — available in Aqua, Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, and White — regularly trades in the US$12,000–13,000 range per colour at auction. Black Lemon on Yellow and Yellow Lemon on Black have both achieved US$12,500. The Lantern Flowers, Feb 18 series has traded at US$12,112. The Little Lantern Flowers (Portfolio of 8) has achieved US$15,240. Seven Blues realised US$15,360. White Tulips and Vase, April 4 achieved US$15,300.
These results confirm Sultan as a reliable performer in the contemporary prints market — an artist whose editions are accessible at multiple price points while maintaining consistent secondary market support.
Guy Hepner represents Donald Sultan editions from our New York gallery, with direct access to works across all major series. Contact us for current availability, pricing, and condition reports.
Donald Sultan: Life and Practice
Donald Sultan (b. 1951, Asheville, North Carolina) is an American painter and printmaker whose practice fuses industrial materials and processes with the timeless subjects of still life — flowers, lemons, eggs, dominoes — to produce works of extraordinary physical and emotional weight. He studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, before settling in New York in the mid-1970s, where he became a central figure in the revival of painting that challenged the dominance of Conceptual art and Minimalism.
Sultan's paintings are made on a support of vinyl floor tiles rather than conventional canvas, and he applies tar, spackle, and oil paint in a process that produces surfaces of remarkable depth and complexity. This industrial process — borrowed from the trades rather than from art-making tradition — gives his works their characteristic physicality: forms that are at once gestural and architectural, surfaces that carry the history of their making with unusual directness.
His subjects are drawn from the most traditional vocabulary of Western still life — flowers, fruit, playing cards, garden implements — but rendered at a scale and with a material presence that transforms them. A poppy painted at 96 × 96 inches in black tar and oil is not a botanical study; it is an event. Sultan's work asks what these familiar images — so worn by repetition as to be nearly invisible — look like when confronted at full scale and full weight.
Sultan has lived and worked in New York for over four decades. His paintings and prints are held in major museum collections worldwide, and his market has remained consistently active across economic cycles.
Series Overview
Poppies — Sultan's most celebrated series: monumental poppies executed in lush blacks, reds, blues, and greens that carry his characteristic combination of formal power and symbolic weight. Available in single, double, and portfolio formats across multiple colourways.
Wall Poppies — Larger, more architecturally scaled poppy works that extend the formal range of the Poppies series.
Lantern Flowers — Pendant blooms rendered with the same economy he brings to his poppies, demonstrating the full range of his botanical vocabulary in a more delicate register.
Blues and Silvers — A cooler, more nocturnal palette applied to his floral imagery, giving these works a distinctive atmosphere.
Lemons — Still life studies of lemons — one of the great subjects of Western still life painting — rendered at Sultan's characteristic scale and with his industrial process, creating works of unexpected formal power.
Other Flowers — Works outside the major series that demonstrate the breadth of his botanical interests.
Museum Collections and Recognition
Donald Sultan's work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and numerous other institutions in the United States and internationally.
Buying and Selling Donald Sultan with Guy Hepner
Guy Hepner has been a New York dealer of Donald Sultan editions for many years, with direct access to works across all major series. We maintain inventory in depth and can source specific colourways and formats on request. For those looking to sell, we provide discreet evaluation and access to our global collector network. Contact our New York gallery for pricing, availability, and condition reports.