Dear Joan of Art,


Untitled I'm looking for any information on Purvis Young of Miami. How is he categorized as an artist? Are his works being exhibited in galleries?

Most often, Young is described as a self-taught artist who took some adult classes and learned about art at the public library. In the book Contemporary American Folk Art: A Collector's Guide Jan and Chuck Rosenak call him a "visionary 'street' artist."

Here is an excerpt from Contemporary American Folk Art: A Collector's Guide (New York: Abbeville Press, 1996):

Purvis Young
Born: February 4, 1943, Liberty City, Miami
Resides: Overtown, Miami

"Purvis Young has seen it all—the inside of a jail, the riots that raged through Overtown, the drug culture—and he paints it as he sees it and feels it. Young is a black visionary 'street' artist who paints 'peoples who are knocking each other out trying to get over the blue eye.' A cherubic blue-eyed 'angel face' (which represents the white establishment) watching over a mean street is one of the symbols that Young uses in his work; others include a silhouetted black horse and a pregnant African woman who appears to be engaged in a ritual dance. In his paintings, heads and faces that rise above the crowd stand for the 'good people' and 'angels.'"

The artist is represented by Janet Fleisher Gallery, 211 South 17th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19103.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has one artwork by Purvis in its collection. Untitled (shown above) is part of our traveling show, Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which will open at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 11, 2001.

And lastly, if you want to know more about the artist, you can read an article from our journal, American Art. The title is "Going Urban: American Folk Art and the Great Migration," by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, from volume 14, no 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 26–51. You can track it down in your public library, or you can view the entire article online.

I hope this information is helpful.

Sincerely,
Joan of Art

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. African-American Art: 19th and 20th-Century Selections (brochure. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art).

Pictured: Purvis Young, born 1943, Untitled, about 1988, acrylic on plywood, 40 1/2 x 48 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.