Purvis YOUNG (American, 1943-2010)
Untitled (Horses)
c. 1990
Paint on plywood
59 x 27 1/2 in. / 150 x 70 cm.
Signed ‘Young’ upper center.
In the vast visual vocabulary of the self-taught African-American artist Purvis Young (1943–2010), the horse holds a central, deeply spiritual significance. Living and working in Miami's Overtown neighborhood, Young developed a unique iconography where horses embody messages of freedom, resistance and hope. The artist explicitly stated, "I always liked drawing and painting horses, wild horses. I mostly use the horses for freedom." His galloping herds represent an escape from the harsh, oppressive realities of urban life. The artist, widely credited as a pioneer of Social Expressionism and Urban Expressionism, painted his horses with rapid, fluid, and energetic brushstrokes. This technique creates dreamlike silhouettes captured in constant motion, heavily influenced by the rhythms of jazz and blues music. True to the spirit of Outsider Art, Young painted his horses on discarded materials salvaged from the streets of Overtown. He used house paint and acrylics on scraps of plywood, cardboard, and found wood, adding a raw, sculptural texture to the movement of the animals. Several world-renowned museums preserve and exhibit paintings by Purvis Young that specifically feature his iconic horse motif: - The Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY: "Locked Up Their Minds", 1972 - The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.: Untitled (Horses), 1988 and "Horses and Mountains", c. 1990 - The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA: "Angels and Their Horses", 1985 - The Rubell Museum, Miami, FL: holding one of the largest single collections of Purvis Young's works in the world, the Rubell frequently features his prominent Overtown motifs, including expansive murals of wild horses. - The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL: Untitled (Angel, Boats, and Horse), ca. 1988. A massive, nearly six-foot-tall diptych composed of two found plywood boards nailed together, layering a prominent horse figure alongside his other signature migration and spiritual imagery.