Mixed media painting (figures with pink)

Purvis Young was a self-taught artist who began drawing during his incarceration as a teenager for breaking and entering at Florida’s Raiford State Penitentiary in 1961. Using art books as his reference and inspiration, Young developed his skills independently and created art prolifically throughout his life. He became renowned for his dynamic collages, paintings, constructions, and artist books, often incorporating discarded materials.

Young spent his life in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood, a historically African American area marked by systemic challenges, including violence, poverty, and the displacement of residents following the construction of I-95. “Goodbread Alley,” an abandoned site in Overtown, became the canvas for some of his earliest murals, which served as his introduction to painting. Through these murals, Young expressed his observations of activism and anti-war protests, blending social commentary with personal reflection.

In an interview with Souls Grown Deep, Young described his work:

"That’s when I started the figure painting, people walking along, knocking each other down, like that. My feeling was the world might be better if I put up my protests…. It was just something I had to be doing. I make like I’m a warrior, like God sending an angel to stop war."

Themes of struggle and the African American (and Afro-Caribbean) experience are central to Young’s work. His subject matter includes a wide array of imagery: heroes of social justice, angels, Jesus, Muslims, immigrants traveling by boat (inspired by his grandmother's journey from the Bahamas), horses symbolizing freedom, funerals, railroad tracks, trucks, soldiers, and large, watchful eyes. His figures are elongated and dynamic, often depicted in processions, dancing, or gathering in communal scenes.

“I get a lot of my ideas sometimes just riding my bicycle around, just looking at reality, looking life straight in its face,” Young shared. “I try to catch [people] in their environments and paint what I see. If they’re not happy, sometimes I paint it like that.” The detritus of Overtown—plywood, broken furniture, and other found objects—often formed the basis of his constructed works.

Young’s artist books were similarly resourceful, created over time by assembling drawings onto found books. The three books included in this collection reflect this cumulative process, with drawings spanning the 1970s to 1991, when they were acquired directly from the artist.

Young’s career also challenges traditional notions of “outsider art,” a label often applied to self-taught artists with the assumption that they exist outside mainstream art systems. Although he was “discovered” by Miami Museum of Modern Art founder Bernard Davis, Young’s work achieved significant success during his lifetime and continues to be celebrated in the contemporary art world. His pieces have appeared in the Venice Biennale (2019) and are held in major institutions, including the Rubell Family Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Young’s legacy illustrates the limitations of the “outsider art” category, which presupposes a permanent marginalization incompatible with the acclaim he ultimately received.