Altoon Sultan

Altoon Sultan (b. 1948, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in Groton, Vermont.

A formalist in the classical sense, Altoon Sultan is an artist who is interested in composition, color, spatial relationships, and light. No matter what she has depicted, whether it be Victorian architecture, modern agricultural landscapes or details of farming machinery, what she creates is deeply engaged in long-standing discussions of form, line, representation and abstraction. Having originally studied with Philip Pearlstein and Lois Dodd in the late 60s and early 70s, she comes from a tradition of representation whose interest in capturing perceived reality is second only to its stringent, vivid and precise interpretation of it. What is more, if she is working in the legacy of modernism, it has more to do with the likes of Ellsworth Kelly than any kind of Greenbergian purity, in that although she might insist on the primacy of form, what she portrays is thoroughly embedded in our shared, everyday reality.

Sultan is known for her egg tempera paintings on calfskin parchment. In keeping with her interest in industrial farming and the production of food, the imagery in the work consists of details of agricultural implements and machinery. Based on photos that the artist takes herself in the summer, the resultant images can be considered readymade representational abstractions in which even the choice of colors comes from “nature.” Isolated and zeroed-in upon, the portrayed details all but withdraw into illusory approximations of pure form, like so many lines, angles and circles.

She received her MFA and BFA from Brooklyn College.

Recent solo exhibitions include “New Paintings,” Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024; and Hollybush Gardens, London, 2023.