"Meet Purvis Young"

“My dream is to go to France, and see where the great painters are from.” Purvis Young, 1973

If the artist, who was born in 1943 in Liberty City and passed away in 2010 in Overtown, was unable to achieve his dream and has so far rarely been exhibited in France, Doriano Navarra and Joseph Abergel with the exhibition “Meet Purvis Young” at Galerie 75 Faubourg attempt to revive this old dream.

In his artworks, Purvis Young depicts the urban culture of the neighborhood of Overtown in Miami, which the artist has practically never left. Self-taught and particularly prolific painter, he assembles the discarded objects he finds around his home: account books, wooden planks, carpet, fabrics, advertising leaflets, linoleum, cardboard… His works combine urban environment, representations of the sacred and of fertility, but also war and popular uprisings. Always through the prism of his life, of life, of a reality that fits into his own mythology. Purvis Young thus creates a narrative that belongs to him while being universal.

In her introductory text, Olivia Anani writes: “Plank by plank, stroke by stroke, one panel at a time, history has been made by these black hands, and an epic narrative has taken form.”

Purvis Young’s works have entered major private and institutional collections such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC, USA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA), the Rubell Family Collection (Miami, USA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, USA).