Purvis Young

(Miami, Florida, 1943 - 2010, Miami, Florida)

North America, American

Young spent his entire life within the street subculture of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood. Incarcerated for armed robbery from the ages of eighteen to twenty-one, he was encouraged to draw by a prison attendant. During the late 1960s, Young was inspired to express his ethnic and community pride by the urban mural movement. This was an effort to involve citizens in their communities (usually disadvantaged neighborhoods) by giving them materials and large outdoor spaces to create murals with a social message. Young created both public and private works characterized by recurrent images of skewed buildings and floating heads.

Florida, United States

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