Arts & Music DES MOINES, IOWA – As a local custom frame retailer and art gallery, The Great Frame Up in West Des Moines enjoys supporting the visual arts. This month we introduce readers to visual artist and collagist originally from Miami, Florida – PURVIS YOUNG. “Painting is about an artist’s ability to reveal personal truths, and Purvis Young was the storyteller of his neighborhood and his era.” - Mera Rubell, New York collector Purvis Young (February 4, 1943 – April 20, 2010) was an American artist from the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida. Young’s work, often a blend of collage and painting, utilizes found objects and the experience African Americans in the south. A self-taught artist, Young gained recognition as a cult contemporary self-taught artist, with a collectors’ following including the likes of Jane Fonda, Damon Wayans, Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, among others. In 2006 a feature documentary entitled Purvis of Overtown was produced about his life and work. His work is found in the collections of the American Folk Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the High Museum of Art, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. Visit Purvis Young Museum, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 2018, he was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. of Early Life & Mid Career - Purvis Young was born in Liberty City, a neighborhood of Miami, Florida, on February 2, 1943. As a young boy his uncle introduced him to drawing, but Young lost interest quickly. He never attended high school. As a teenager Young served three years (1961–64) in prison at North Florida’s Raiford State Penitentiary for breaking and entering. While in prison he would regain his interest in art and begin drawing and studying art books. When released, he began to produce thousands of small drawings, which he kept in shopping carts and later glued into discarded books and magazines that he found on the streets. He proceeded to move into the Overtown neighborhood of Miami. Young found himself attracted to a vacant alley called Goodbread Alley, which was named after the Jamaican bakeries that once occupied the street; he would start living there in 1971. In the early 1970’s Purvis Young found inspiration in the mural movements of Chicago and Detroit, and decided to create a mural of inspiration, Overtown. He had never painted before, but inspiration struck, and he began to create paintings and nailing them to the boarded up storefronts that formed the alley. He would paint on wood he found on the streets and occasionally paintings would “disappear” from the wall, but Purvis Young didn’t mind. About two years after starting the mural, tourists started visiting the alley, mainly white tourists. Occasionally, Purvis Young would sell paintings to visitors — tourists and collectors alike —right off the wall. The mural garnered media attention, including the attention of millionaire Bernard Davis, owner of the Miami Art Museum. As Davis became a patron of Purvis Young’s, Young’s notoriety grew, and he became a celebrity in Miami. In 1973, Purvis Young began affixing hundreds of painted panels to a run-down building in Overtown, a few blocks north of Downtown Miami. The area became known as Good Bread Alley and developed over a period of two years. It served as an artful veil of the rougher reality of the ghetto surrounding it. Artistic Work - Purvis Young found strong influence in Western art history and voraciously absorbed books from his nearby public library by Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin, El Greco, Daumier and Picasso. His work was vibrant and colorful and was described as appearing like fingerpainting. Reoccurring themes in his work were angels, wild horses, and urban landscapes. Through his works he expressed social and racial issues and served as an outspoken activist about politics and bureaucracy. He is credited with influencing the art movement terms Social Expressionism or Urban Expressionism. April 2019 The URBAN EXPERIENCE 11
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