Purivs Young Large 31" Signed Original Painting Rainbow Truck

Artist: Purvis Young
Title: Untitled (Rainbow Truck)
Medium: Mixed media painting on silk screen frame
Size: 23-1/2" x 31-1/4"
Edition: Original
Inscription: Signed "Young"
Condition: In the style of found art with an intentionally weathered appearance. Expected imperfections include heavy creasing, unfinished edges, and marks and staining on the back.
Documentation: Includes a Certificate of Authenticity from the Purvis Young Foundation

The incorporation of found items in Purvis Young's art serves as a tangible tie between the artist and his community. Using found objects from his neighborhood, such as cardboard, discarded political signs, used paper, doors, plywood scraps, metal sheets, carpet remnants, he transformed these surfaces into richly colored and highly expressionist paintings. The use of found items in Young's art has become a significant part of his signature style and a symbolic element of his background as a street artist. Typically, Young paints directly on these found materials, but in “Rainbow Truck,” he uses the found items as a handmade frame for his original painting on canvas.

Trucks and other modes of transportation are a recurring theme throughout Purvis Young's body of work, symbolizing movement, migration, and opportunity. Young often uses dark, moody earth tones in his art which casts a serious tone on the social issues he explores. In this untitled oil painting on paper, he instead uses a rainbow of bright colors giving the piece a more optimistic outlook. "Rainbow Truck" Is prominently signed "Young" on the front and comes will a Certificate of Authenticity from the Purvis Young Foundation.

About Purvis Young

Self-taught artist from a poverty stricken neighborhood of Miami, Purvis Young transformed his fraught yet inspired life experience into a unique and compelling visual vocabulary. Through a range of powerful symbols, he articulated the struggles and myths of his heritage.

Drawing from a range of sources such as documentaries, art books, American history and spiritual folklore, Young crafted an immense visual language comprised of motifs such as white horses offering freedom, halos signifying angles, pregnant women with the hope of tomorrow, processions and incarceration, among others. Telling simple, yet powerful stories of everyday life, the artist expressed his community and ethnic background. Using found objects from his neighborhood, such as cardboard, discarded political signs, used paper, doors, plywood scraps, metal sheets, carpet remnants, he transformed these surfaces into richly colored and highly expressionist paintings. Although Young is often associated with Outsider Art, his style could best be described as "Magic Realism".

In 2016, his life and work were the subject of a feature documentary entitled Purvis of Overtown. He was a recipient of the Artists/Fellowship grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and was included into the Florida Artist Hall of Fame in 2018. His work is found in the collections of the American Folk Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the High Museum of Art, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.

The subjects of Purvis Young celebrated and historicized the neighborhood where he had spent his entire life. Even though his works chronicled struggle, they always contained an underlining hope for a better future.

Purvis Young was born in 1943 in Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida and died in 2010 in Miami. In 2015, almost 400 pieces of Young’s art were donated by The Bass Museum of Art to the permanent collection in the Black Archives History and research Foundation of South Florida located in the heart of Purvis’ hometown.