Mario Toral Art

Mario Toral Muñoz is a Chilean painter and photographer. At the age of 16, he moved to Buenos Aires, where he saved money to enroll in the Escuela de Bellas Artes (School of Fine Arts) in Montevideo, Uruguay. He later went to Brazil, where at 21 the first exhibition of his work was shown at the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art. In 1957, Toral moved to France, where he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. Between 1973–92, Toral lived in New York City. Major works completed during this period include Prisioneras de Piedra (Prisoners of Stone, 1974–77) and Mascaras (Masks, 1979–81). Returning to Chile in 1992, Toral was a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Finis Terrae University. In September 2007. Toral received the medal of honor from the Pablo Neruda Foundation in recognition of his career trajectory and contributions to Chilean culture. He had collaborated with the poet Pablo Neruda, illustrating a number of his poems, including a 1963 edition of Alturas de Macchu Picchu. In 1999, Toral completed the mural Memoria Visual de una Nación (Visual Memory of a Nation), located at the Universidad de Chile metro station in Santiago.