Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. He graduated in Engineering from the Catholic University of Petrópolis-RJ, in 1978, and in the period from 1976 to 1978, he attended several courses at the School of Visual Arts at Parque Lage. In 1992 he was a fellow of the British Council at Glasgow Print Studio, Scotland, UK. Right at the beginning of his career, in 1980, he received the 1st Drawing Prize, at the IV Salão Carioca de Arte, RJ, and in the same year the Casa da Gravura Collection Award, III Annual Gravure Exhibition of Curitiba, PR. In 1986, he received the Acquisition Award from the IX National Salon of Arts.

With a consolidated career in Visual Arts since 1980, Luiz Ernesto Moraes regularly participates in national and international exhibitions, in the main Galleries, Cultural Centers and Salons in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Brasília. Among the international exhibitions, he participated, in 1978, in the Triennale Latino Americana del Grabado, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Twelve Brasilian Printmakers, Maryland and New York, USA; in 1983 from the exhibition Graficos del Brasil, Foro de Arte Contemporaneo, México; in 1991 from Latin American Drawings Today, San Diego Museum of Art, USA; in 1993 from Twenty-one Years Old of The Glasgow Print Studio, McLellan Galleries, Scotland, UK and Brazil, Images of 80’s & 90’s, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC, USA; in 1994 at the 5th Biennial of La Habana, Cuba, and in 2011, Europalia, Palace of Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium. His works are part of the collection of the João Sattamini Collections, MAC Niterói, RJ and Gilberto Chateaubriand, MAM, RJ. In addition to his career as a visual artist, since 1979 he has also been a professor at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, having held the position of director of EAV from 1998 to 2002.