Donald Sultan - HEATWAVE: Online Auction London Wednesday, July 17, 2019 | Phillips

HEATWAVE: Online Auction

Online Auction 17 - 26 July 2019

  • Description

    Please note this lot is the property of a private individual.

  • Provenance

    Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    ‘…I try to pare down the images to their essence and capture the fleeting aspect of reality, pitting the gesture against the geometric...’ Donald Sultan.

    Both structural and painterly, Black with Colors from Donald Sultan’s acclaimed body of work traverses the line between abstraction and representation. Often constructed from industrial materials, such as spackle, tar, linoleum and flocking, Sultan developed his unique use of medium through his early work as a theatre set-builder. The artist's recognisable aesthetic is encapsulated through the artist’s close cropping and richly textured renderings of familiar natural subjects, most notably lemons, poppies, pomegranates and tulips. These organic motifs are transported from traditional floral depictions seen in historical still life painting and are re-imagined in the artist’s enlarged square-format compositions, their form defined through Sultan’s use of large planes of black pigment and flocking. With its lustrous surface quality, Black with Colors subsumes the viewer’s gaze with its subtle surface variations, creating areas of light and shade with vibrant bursts of saturated pigments, evoking a warm summer palette.

    Born in North Carolina in 1951, the artist’s 1977 solo exhibition at Artist’s Space, New York, contributed to the artist’s international success and critical acclaim; Sultan’s works are currently held in the permanent collections of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern, London.

16

Donald Sultan

Black with Colors

signed with the artist's initials, titled and dated 'Black W Colors May 6 2006 DS' left edge; further signed, titled and dated 'Black W Colors May 6 2006 D Sultan' on the reverse
flock, enamel, porcelain, tar and spackle on tile on Masonite
131 x 130.5 cm (51 5/8 x 51 3/8 in.)
Executed in May 2006.

Estimate
£12,000 - 18,000 

Sold for £15,000

Contact Specialist
Charlotte Gibbs
Head of Sale
+44 20 7901 7993
cgibbs@phillips.com

HEATWAVE: Online Auction

Online Auction 17 - 26 July 2019