Purvis Young

(American, 1943–2010)

Purvis Young was a self-taught African-American artist known for his expressive collages and paintings. Made on found objects, including scrap metal, book pages, and discarded envelops, his richly colored depictions of trucks, figures, and coil-shaped abstractions, described a fraught yet inspired experience of living in the poverty stricken Overtown neighborhood of Miami. “What I say is the world is getting worser, guys pushing buggies, street people not having no jobs here in Miami, drugs kill the young, and church people riding around in luxury cars,” he once remarked. Born on February 4, 1943 in Liberty City, FL, he learned to draw from his uncle at a young age but never had any formal art training. It was during his incarceration at the Raiford State Penitentiary from 1961–1961 as a teenager, that he began drawing prolifically. Years after his release, Young’s creative output attracted the attention of Bernard Davis, the owner of the Miami Art Museum. Davis subsequently brought the artist’s work into the public eye, and by the 1970s, tourists and collectors regularly visited Young in Goodbread Alley where he lived and worked. Inspired by books on Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, El Greco, and Paul Gauguin, as well as documentaries on American history, Young’s work grew in scope and formal invention throughout the latter part of his career. The artist died on April 20, 2010 in Miami, FL. Today, his works are held in the collections of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the American Folk Art Museum in New York, and the de Young Museum of Art in San Francisco, among others.