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2 Purvis Young orig drawings

Artist: Young, Purvis (African/American Naïve born, 1943)
Title: Six Horses and Four Figures
Date: n.d.
Medium: drawings on found paper and collage
Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 each
Description: interesting naïve drawings by Important African American Artist Purvis Young
Signature: both signed Young top right
Frame Type: floated in larger frames
Frame Size: approx. 24 x 20 inches PURVIS YOUNG : (American, b.1943) Urban Expressionist Painter , Outsider/Folk Artist Purvis Young was born in Florida to a poor Afro-American Family in 1943. Using recycled materials found on the streets of one of Miami FL’s most urban neighborhoods to create art in a style that is truly unique and captivating. Young is considered to be one of the greatest outsider artists of our time. The artists work is on display at the House of Blues in Orlando FL, where a 60 ft. installation painted by Young on a fence is part of the permanent backdrop adjacent to the restaurant. His work has been sold at many major auction houses including Christie’s N.Y. and continues to grow in value. Young first gained attention as an artist more than 40 years ago, when he began making large mural-style paintings on plywood nailed to the exteriors of abandoned buildings in the Overtown ghetto where he has spent most of his life. In a fashion characteristic of his work, the paintings are on scrap wood panels and other flat, rectangular materials that Young salvages from the streets and dumpsters. He uses them in such a way that they can be seen as metaphors for the human lives that are wasted in such economically impoverished inner-city environments - tossed aside by society and yet being capable of being reclaimed and restored, just as Young transforms and renews the castoffs from which he makes his art. As an artist Young is different. He is self-taught and self-educated. He works within his own system and it is no less valuable than traditional systems used by other artists. Unlike many other self-trained personalities who are coined as "Outsider Artists" because they work without the benefits of academic training, Young has substituted a lack of formal education with intensive reading and study and is incredibly knowledgeable and sophisticated about the history of art. He applies his own personal ideology and unique world view to the media of paint to create a visual language that expresses his concerns as much as it captures the life of the people and city that surround him. After learning of the "Freedom Walls" created by artists in Detroit and Chicago, Young decided in 1972, to create his own public mural at the intersection of Northwest Third Avenue an 14th Street in Overtown, Miami's inner-city coined "Good Bread Alley." The installation was visible from the newly constructed Interstate 95, which had all but dissected and consequently isolated his community from the rest of South Florida. since 1972 ;Young's unique view on life is a symbolic vocabulary where city street scenes move to the rhythm of life, wild horses roam free, "eyes of establishment" loom over, ancient warriors do battle, immigrant-laden boats set sail, legendary jazz and blues performers rip. It is here that Purvis Young easily, yet effectively, expresses his true feelings. Artists have long visualized the complexities of life and their own experiences through the media of painting. The majority of them who are familiar and successful have also relied on fixed social and aesthetic systems of meaning and analysis. They work within the traditional methodology and marketability of Western-European art history (with its "high-culture bias"). Purvis Young is a storyteller. Considering his obsession for books and his insatiable appetite for knowledge about art, it is not surprising that his paintings and his books of paintings appear to serve the purpose of educational books. They all contain, preserve, and document knowledge of real life situations. Whether it is in bound form or painted on any available material that he happens to find, the images created by Young tell a story. Like his African-American ancestors who maintained the traditions and values of their people through storytelling, he continues to record the struggles, the hopes, and the joys of his world. This continued struggle of 200-plus years is still apparent in today‘s ghetto. But the story he records in paint is also the story of everywhere. His concerns are universal. His view from the street is the view of the people, and although his visual language may be unsanctioned and unofficial, it is powerful and recognizable. It reaches the heart of everyone. Heads, figures, animals and icons Appear within the abstractions and marks of his complexly layered and colorful compositions. Nothing more than the banalities of the local landscape, they emerge as spontaneously as his reactions to events in the world that surrounds him. People on the street, animals, city buildings, trains, boats and trucks inhabit an imaginative painted surface. Consistent with his vernacular approach, Young eliminates all the traditional hierarchies of composition and perspectives while working the pigment until it seems as defined as an old public wall. Purvis Young works with materials that he finds, recycles, puts together, recreates and constructs. It may be paper from old books or other discarded documents. It may be cardboard boxes, sheets of metal or pieces of wood. His contextually uncluttered approach to art makes no assumptions about what should or should not be used to produce his works, or how such materials should be combined. His style is aggressive and personal. Every stroke of color comes from his soul. Every figure, line, shape and form is essential to the story he tells. There are no extraneous details or insignificant marks. His kind of abstraction is not based on the lessons of the New York School, but on the necessities of his artistry alone. It is a more direct and spontaneous approach that allows him to reduce life‘s complexities to their most essential signs. Through art, he speaks the language of the people. Just as written language as communicated through a very condensed system of letters, Young tells his stories through paint to become the unofficial storyteller. Since the late 1960’s Young has exhibited in museum’s and galleries worldwide, and his work can be found in The American Folk Art Museum, The Smithsonian Institute, The Whitney Museum, The State Museum of Florida and many others. In conjunction with the Hurn Museum of Contemporary Folk Art in Savannah, Skot Foreman Fine Art held an exhibition titled "Purvis Young: 1969-2000; A 30+ Year Painting Retrospective" taking place in Savannah, Georgia in 2006.

in good condition