Donald Sultan Black Poppies with Colors For Sale

About this work

Donald Sultan has maintained a singular position in contemporary art since emerging in the 1980s as a leading figure of the New Image movement. His monumental still life paintings, constructed through an unconventional process involving industrial materials such as tar, vinyl tile, and spackle, challenged the boundaries between painting and sculpture while revitalizing a genre many considered exhausted. Sultan's work resides in the permanent collections of major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, cementing his place within the canon of postwar American art. White Poppies with Colors extends Sultan's decades-long exploration of botanical imagery, a subject that has occupied him since the mid-1980s. The poppies, rendered as bold silhouettes against a luminous ground, exemplify his characteristic tension between flatness and depth, simplicity and complexity. This 2026 edition demonstrates Sultan's continued technical innovation, combining color silkscreen with enamel inks, flocking, and his signature tar-like texture on archival museum board. The interplay of matte and reflective surfaces creates a tactile presence that distinguishes his prints from conventional editions, blurring the line between graphic work and object. At 42 by 42 inches, the scale commands attention while the limited edition of 40 ensures relative scarcity within Sultan's graphic oeuvre. The poppy motif carries layered associations—beauty, fragility, remembrance—that Sultan neither imposes nor dismisses, allowing viewers to locate their own meaning within the image's formal elegance. For acquisition inquiries regarding this work, please contact Guy Hepner, New York.