Paisaje con muros [Landscape with Walls]

Landscape with Walls is one of Morales’ paintings from his early abstract expressionist phase. Morales’ work from this period is dominated by the use of black, white, gray, and the incorporation of a thick impasto recalling of the work of American abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell and Spanish informalists such as Antonio Tapiés. In Spain, lyric abstraction had a strong anti-fascist undertone, as a counteractive force to government-mandated artistic styles. The Nicaraguan artistic group Praxis, active from 1963–73, similarly linked the artistic innovation associated with abstract expressionism to progressive politics supportive of the Sandanistas, a revolutionary group opposed to Anastasio Somoza Debayle, one of a family of authoritarian leaders of Nicaragua. In Landscape with Walls, Morales uses abstract expressionism as it was filtered through the Spanish informalists and the Praxis group, possibly to express anti-Somoza sentiments