Purvis Young — Outsider from Overtown — Avant Garde Art
2 min readMar 14, 2019
Purvis Young (February 4, 1943 — April 20, 2010) was an American artist from the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida. Self-taught, Young’s work was often a blend painting/drawing with collaged elements utilizing everyday discarded found objects.
Inspired by documentaries, (art)books, American history and spiritual folklore his visual vocabuluary was vast; wild horses, urban landscapes, (self) portraits, figures, holymen, angels, warriors, boats, sports, musicians, erotica, processions and incarceration to name but a few…
