The painter Yannis Moralis was born in Arta in 1916 and passed away in Athens in 2009.
He took his first painting lessons in 1927 by attending the Sunday drawing classes at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he later studied under professors Dimitrios Geraniotis, Konstantinos Parthenis, and Umvertos Argyros (1931–1936). From 1933, he also attended classes at the printmaking studio of Yannis Kefallinos. In 1936, he departed for Rome alongside his friend, the painter N. Nikolaou. In Paris, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (painting under Charles Guérin and mural painting under Ducos de l’Haille) and mosaic art at the École des Arts et Métiers. He returned to Greece in 1940.
In 1947, he married the sculptor Aglaia Lymberaki and was elected full professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1947–1983), playing a catalytic role as a teacher for generations of artists.
Between 1959 and 1962, he designed and executed the engraved composition on the exterior wall of the Hilton Hotel in Athens. He was also involved in ceramics, illustration, and stage design, working for the National Theatre, the Greek Choreodrama, and Karolos Koun’s Art Theatre.
Until 1950, he operated within a realistic language, creating portraits with a distinct spirituality and latent symbolism. In his “Funerary Composition” (Epitymbia), “Compositions”, and “Interiors” of the 1960s, his human forms evoke ancient funerary steles and acquire a sculptural intensity. In the early 1970s, he created non-figurative and geometric works, influenced by geometric abstraction, yet maintaining a primarily anthropocentric theme focused on love and death. Consciously figurative, he assimilated the lessons of modernism in his own unique way, combining them with a contemporary reading of tradition, particularly ancient art. He exerted a decisive influence on postwar Greek art through his teaching and his painting.
He held solo exhibitions in Athens and participated in numerous group exhibitions (including the Venice Biennale in 1958).
He received a bronze medal at the Panhellenic Exhibition of 1940 and a gold medal at the International Handcrafts Fair in Munich in 1973. He was elected a regular member of the International Institute of Letters and Arts (1962), and was honored with the Order of the Commander of the Phoenix (1979) and the Excellence in Letters and Arts award from the Academy of Athens (1979).
His works are located in museums, public, and private collections.