Dario Morales

Ana Maria in the bathtub, 1983 – 86

Woman in Rocking Chair, 1972

Nude in Front of French Windows, 1973

The sensuality of the female body was his main obsession; he treated it in a very personal way, surrounding it with closed environments and everyday objects that, nevertheless, gave his paintings a certain atmosphere of “pictorial scenography”. The attitude he assumed is close to that of art history before the invention of photography, when the model had to stand still for hours.

Darío Morales was born in Cartagena on August 6, 1944. He studied from the age of 12 at the School of Fine Arts in Cartagena, at the age of 14 he made his first exhibition with his classmates. In 1962 he entered the School of Fine Arts of the National University of Bogota. In 1968 he had an important individual exhibition at the National Library of Bogota. That same year he married Ana María Villa and traveled to Paris to study engraving at Atelier 17, with S. W. Hayter.

Since the late seventies he made bronze sculptures, female nudes in different positions and attitudes, some workshop scenes in which he portrayed himself with the model and at the end of his life, still lifes in bronze exquisitely patinated from found objects. Morales received a number of distinctions and awards for his exhibitions.

The following year he decided to settle permanently in Paris. Since 1972 he has had solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. His work consists of drawings, paintings, engravings and sculptures, which stand out for their great technical care in the manner of the masters of the past. It can be said that his is a good trade in the traditional sense of the term. He dealt with conventional subjects of art history, mainly the nude.

Morales repeatedly declared himself intentionally outside the avant-garde currents, because his interest was closer to the masters of the 19th century such as Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Since the late seventies he made bronze sculptures, female nudes in different positions and attitudes, some workshop scenes in which he portrayed himself with the model and, at the end of his life, still lifes in bronze exquisitely patinated from found objects.

When he knew that death was inexorably approaching, the artist forged a series of still lifes. clinging to the volume and skin of the reality that was slipping away at 44 years of age. He planned to have his body cremated and his ashes thrown into the Cartagena sea in front of the gigantic studio he was building in Pedro Romero’s old house on Calle Larga. He was the first artist in Cartagena to decide to rest forever in the infinite waves. He finally died in Paris on March 21, 1988.

Intimacy, movement and everyday life: the work of Darío Morales

Darío Morales was born in 1944 in Cartagena. He is considered one of Colombia’s most important artists of the 20th century for his unique and realist

21 April, 2023

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