No one taught Purvis Young how to hold a paintbrush. In fact, no one taught Purvis Young much of anything. He was born in 1943 in Liberty City, a neighborhood of Miami, and high school wasn’t on his agenda. In his late teens he spent three years in jail, for breaking and entering, and it was there that he became interested in art. Young pored over books that held pictures of paintings by Van Gogh, El Greco, Picasso, and Gauguin; his style is rooted in their work. Painting, collage, the use of found objects, and an interest in history come together in his outsider expressionism, which finally won attention in the years before his death, in 2010. Young’s reputation as a homegrown artist with a distinctive vision has continued to grow in the last decade. Westport’s Museum of Contemporary Art features 36 large-scale works by Young that have never before been publicly displayed. —Jack Sullivan