Purvis Young

Donor # 17A/B.
Young worked in a wide range of media, from collages, drawings, and paintings to large-scale assemblages and murals, often executed on found materials. He frequently drew on printed forms and found letters, pasting his works onto the pages of books. This double-sided collage may once have been part of such a book. Inspired by life in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, his imagery expresses the struggles and triumphs of his neighbors through groups of figures reaching toward the sky. Young's vivid and expressionistic style was influenced by artists like Rembrandt, El Greco, and Van Gogh, whose paintings he encountered in art books.