Darío Morales was a Colombian Postwar & Contemporary artist. He studied from the age of 12 at the School of Fine Arts in Cartagena. In 1962 he entered the School of Fine Arts of the National University of Bogotá.
In 1968 he held an important solo exhibition at the Luis Ángel Arango Library in Bogotá. That same year he married Ana María Villa and traveled to Paris with a loan from ICETEX. In Paris, he studied engraving at the Atelier 17 with the British teacher Stanley William Hayter. He settled permanently in Paris where he formed his family life.
In 1972 he exhibited individually in the United States and Europe. His drawings, paintings, engravings, and sculptures stood out for his great technique in the style of the masters of the past. He deals with conventional themes in art history, mainly nudes. The sensuality of the female body was his main obsession.
From the end of the seventies, he made bronze sculptures of female nudes in different positions and attitudes.
Morales received various distinctions and awards. Among them, the Prize for Painting at the VII Francisco A. Cano Salon (1963); the First Prize for Painting at the x Salón Cano (1966); the first prize for Drawing at the X Exhibition Panamericana de Artes Gráficas of the Museum of Modern Art La Tertulia de Cali (1970); the first prize in Drawing in the First National Salon of Plastic Arts of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogotá (1972); and the Colombian Institute of Culture Medal (1986).
He held two retrospective exhibitions, one at the Avianca Hall in Barranquilla (1983) and another at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá (1984).
Colombian, 1944-1988
