Description: A Purvis Young two piece work of art. The base is particle board, 15 x 20.5" painted with various found paints. Pastels with x markings overall. Signed near joint of both pieces. The second piece of plywood, 7.5 x 11.5" nailed upright on the particle board. One side depicts a crowd of people, the other side is a horse and rider, signed top right.


History: The work of the urban black vernacular artist, Purvis Young, has roots in the dreamy fields of high art subject matter-evoking Picasso in its riders, its elegant horses, its nudes. 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 be bop is to the blues. The subject matter rides on a thick layer of color, attention, choice, free-swinging composition that refers to a thousand years of composition before it. Young's choices of materials-the discarded boards he uses to paint on and to "frame" works; the fragments of text, the use of books to mount the works-are not made by happenstance, though early on they may have been the fruit of necessity. Now these are elements of meaning. Now they insist on the presence of the street, full of stuff, humanity, words, scraps, full of the exchanges that create the most exciting cultural milieu in the world, creative, tragic, excessive, beautiful, wasteful.

Provenance: N/A


Dimensions: Weight (Pounds & Ounces) = 2 | Height(in) = 14 | Width(in) = 24 | Depth(in) = 16

Size of Artwork(in): 20.5 x 14 x .5" base


Artist Name: Purvis Young


Medium: Plywood, particle board, paint


Circa: Circa 2000

Good condition.