3 Black Lemons, April 16th, 1987

Since 1977 Sultan has had an extensive number of solo exhibitions in cities around the world including Paris, Tokyo, Rome, London, Switzerland, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. He was the recipient of the Creative Artists Public Service Grant in New York in 1978-79 and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1980-81. His works are in the public collections of such prominent museums as The Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Sultan executes the traditional still-life in such an extraordinary manner that the viewer is forced to challenge his preconceived notions about it. The large velvety forms of the three lemons in this aquatint demonstrate how he can take representational subject matter and turn it into something abstract. By cropping the enormous lemons in this composition, Sultan draws the viewer into the imagery. Sultan says he was inspired to use lemons after he had seen a retrospective of Manet?s at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this exhibition there was a small still-life of the same subject matter. Sultan has taken the traditional still-life to new heights and moved it into the next century.