Purvis Young

The visual perceptions of Purvis Young, a prolific self-taught artist, reveal a vocabulary of symbolic and narrative images steeped in the unrest and celebration of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood.

Inspired by muralists, Purvis saw that he didn't need oil and canvas to realize his dream of being an artist. Using house paint on collected wood scraps, cardboard, and more, to develop his oeuvre.

Purvis painted for his neighbors without expectation of outside recognition. He would often swap a painting for money to pay his electric bill. Today, a painting like this would currently be valued around $12,000.

As a life resident of Overtown, Purvis’s view has remained the same for years. When he paints what he sees, he depicts soaring interstate highway overpasses, poverty, protests, struggle and violence.

Despite being focused on his Overtown neighborhood in Miami, Purvis’s paintings resonate with art lovers in New York, Chicago, Paris, and Cologne, just a few places where his work has been exhibited.

Purvis famously said, "For so many years, people have been calling me all different kinds of names to describe me as an artist: outsider, black artist, ghetto artist, the Picasso of the Ghetto. I just want to be called an artist. That’s all I’ve been doing all my life is painting.”