Purvis Young

[1] Young's work is celebrated at the museum and institutional level while also finding a home in many private collections as well, with a following that included Brice Marden, Jane Fonda, Damon Wayans, Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and others.

[6] As a teenager, Young served three years (1961–64) in prison at North Florida's Raiford State Penitentiary[7] for breaking and entering.

[5] When released, he began to produce thousands of small drawings, which he kept in shopping carts and later glued into discarded books and magazines that he found on the streets.

[5] In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he explored other inspirations by watching historical documentaries about war, the Great Depression, commerce, and Native American conflicts and struggles in the United States.

[6] In 2008 the Rubells donated 108 works to Morehouse College[15] In January 2007, Purvis was selected as the Art Miami Fair's Director's Choice Exhibition, sponsored by Grace Cafe and Galleries and the Bergman Collection, at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Young also helped to establish a number of outdoor art fairs in South Florida that continue today.

The mural was commissioned in part as a community service project and was facilitated by Rosie Gordon Wallace, who is a prominent Miami curator and a friend of the artist.

[5] Young suffered from diabetes, and toward the latter years of his life, he had other health problems, undergoing a kidney transplant in 2007.

[17] Young found strong influence in Western art history and voraciously absorbed books from his nearby public library by Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin, El Greco, Daumier and Picasso.

Through his works, he expressed social and racial issues, and served as an outspoken activist about politics and bureaucracy.

[19] Two Purvis Young works appear on the 2018 David Byrne album American Utopia.

Just as written language as communicated through a very condensed system of letters, Purvis Young tells his stories through paint to become the unofficial storyteller.