Purvis Young Original Painting "ZULU WARRIORS" 30" X 51" W COA

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PURVIS YOUNG1943-2010According to Bill Arnett Author of Souls Grown Deep" widely referred to as the foremost authority of African-American vernacular art in the Country who not only referred to Purvis Young as the "AMERICAS GREATEST PURE PAINTER" He used one of Purvis's paintings as the cover of "Souls Grown Deep II"When I first saw a work by Purvis I "GOT IT" the energy, vibrant, flowing, energetic. It was an immediate attachment to the works of Purvis Young. Later when I m et and got to know Purvis I got an intimate view into the "MAN" and his work. The symbolism, the hidden meanings, Purvis was a storyteller. Considering his obsession for books and his insatiable appetite for knowledge about art, it is not surprising that his painting and his books of paintings appear to serve the purpose of books. They all contain, preserve, and document knowledge of real life situations. Whether in bound form or painted on found materials, Young's images always tell a story. Purvis was in my opinion one of the first ECO Artists, never car ed for fame and was unfaz ed by money He was indeed one of the most incredible people I have ever known. The man never drove a car, his preferred method of transportation was a bicycle. Like his African-American ancestors who maintained the traditions and values of their people through storytelling, he strived to record the struggles, the hopes, and the joys of his world. Young's work has roots in the dreamy fields of high art subject matter--horses, nudes, etc. At the same time it is filled with the energy and syncretism of the world's vanguard American urban Black culture. It is to outsider art what bebop is to the blues. The subject matter rides on a thick layer of color, attention, choice, and free-swinging composition that refers to a thousand years of composition before it. This work is anything but naïve.Young lived and worked in Overtown, an inner city Miami neighborhood cut off by the highway overpasses that loom over it. He's of the community, but also, now, of the larger art world as well. He has researched art history avidly and seen what other artists have done, spending years in the libraries that have supported his work. He chose his imagery out of Overtown and his own life, and out of the resonances of the past as well.Impulsive, vivid, created with a quick, sure, intense touch, Purvis Young's paintings have the spontaneity, the emotional honesty, the immediacy, the dramatic directness and idiosyncrasy we have come to expect from folk art. Their painterly handling conveys a certain joie de vivre, even when it is streaked with black morbidity. I am thinking of Dance (ca. 1977), with its mingling of forceful, twisting drippings, ruthlessly black, and more subdued yellow marks, also painterly but fewer in number, all displayed on a rough and ready Mylar ground, a kind of crude dance floor for the excited paint. It is an abstract expressionist painting in all but name, however much the elongated black gestures can be read as dancing African-Americans. One can feel the beat in the paint, sense the ecstatic movement of the dancers, read their energy as emotional expression.Patrick T. ParkerCurator/CEOParker Abercrombie CollectionThe Young At Heart Collection, LLCAbercrombie Auctions InternationalBiographyBorn: February 4, 1943, Liberty City, Miami, FLDied: April 21, 2010 Overtown, Miami, FLSELECTED EXHIBITIONS2010 "Purvis Young + Grown and Sewn", NY, NY2009 "Highlights from the Permanent Collection", Museum of Fine Art, St. Petersburg, FL"Same Sweet Dream", Dieu Donné, NY NY2008 "The Figure Past and Present: Selections from the Permanent Collection", Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL"30 Americans", Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FLMorehouse College Permanent Installation, Atlanta, GA"Protest: Purvis Young", GalleryBar, New York, NY"Hexagone (a hex is gone)", MAS-Miami Art Space, Miami, FL2007 " Directors Choice" Art Miami, Miami Beach, FL Entrance Installation2007 "A Purvis Yo... read more

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