Born in Bilbao in 1958, he graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country, where he taught between 1983, the year in which he obtained the Gure Artes prize from the Basque Government, and 1988. He moved to London in that same year invited by the Delfina Estudios Foundation. He has put on individual exhibitions in New York, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Helsinki and collective ones at the Institute of Contemporary Arts of London, the Kunsthalle of Bielefeld and the Hamburg Barcelona Museum of Berlin. His works are in numerous collections, including those of the Japanese Marugame Hirai museum, the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Deutsche Bank Collection of London, the National Modern Art Museum in Paris and the Spanish centre of the Wurth collection. In 2005, he was awarded the National Graphic Art Price in Madrid and the Excellent Work Award at the Beijing Biennial.

Dario Urzay works in paint by means of a hybridization of techniques that include computer, photographic and pictorial methods. For many years now, he has incorporated photographic images in movement and screenings that make his painting an expanded field.