François Morelli was born in Montreal in 1953. In 1975, he completed a BFA in painting and drawing at Concordia University. He worked and exhibited at the Don Stewart Gallery from 1975 to 1981 and helped found the artist-run exhibition space Articule in 1979-80. He taught at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi in 1981. From 1981 to 1991, he lived in the New York City area, earning an MFA in installation and performance art in 1983 from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He taught at Rutgers from 1983 to 1990, and at the City University of New York and the State University of New York in Manhattan between 1985 and 1990. Upon returning to Quebec in 1991, he taught at Université du Québec à Trois- Rivières until 1996. Since 1996, he has taught at Concordia University, where he has headed the DLD (Drawing Lab Dessin) with Eric Simon since 2012. Among other honours, he received the Excellence Award at the Biennale du dessin, de l’estampe et du papier in Alma, Quebec, in 1997 and the Louis-Comtois Award from the City of Montreal in 2007.