Donald Sultan Blue with Yellow, 2024 For Sale

About this work

Donald Sultan has occupied a singular position in contemporary art since emerging in the 1980s as a leading figure associated with the return to image-based painting. His work bridges abstraction and representation, drawing from industrial materials and processes to create compositions that are simultaneously bold and contemplative. Sultan's flowers—particularly his black tulips, poppies, and mimosas—have become defining motifs of his practice, offering meditations on beauty, mortality, and the tension between organic form and geometric structure. Blue with Yellow, 2024 represents Sultan's continued exploration of these themes through sculpture, translating his renowned two-dimensional imagery into three-dimensional form. Rendered in painted aluminum with stainless steel centers and mounted on a polished stainless steel base, this work demonstrates Sultan's command of industrial materials while retaining the graphic clarity that defines his painted compositions. The pairing of blue and yellow creates a striking chromatic dialogue, emphasizing the artist's sophisticated understanding of color relationships developed over four decades of practice. This sculptural edition extends Sultan's investigation into how flat imagery functions in space, a concern that has informed his work since his early tar and spackle paintings. The edition of 25 ensures accessibility while maintaining the exclusivity appropriate to Sultan's market position. His works are held in major institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, affirming his significance within the contemporary canon. For acquisition inquiries regarding Blue with Yellow, 2024, please contact Guy Hepner.