Teiko Mori, the Well-Rooted Transplant

Teiko Mori fell for Granada and vice versa. She arrived from her native Japan in her mid twenties, installed herself in a flat with a garden in a ramshackle house populated by artists and set to work recording her interior and exterior surroundings with a pencil. Fascinated by Granada's Moorish legacy, she devoted her first couple of years there to reproducing the Arab script in the Alhambra for the official archives.

Teiko actually took a degree in French before she started her artistic formation in Japan, first under the tutelage of her father, Ryokusui Mori, painter and art profesor at the University of Nagoya Zokei, Japan. Then, in 1970 she studied etching and lithography in Tokyo. In 1973, now in Granada, she was one of the first artists selected to participate in the etching workshop of the Fundación Rodriguez-Acosta with the maestro José García Lomas. This experience brought with it short stays in Italy and France to perfect her technique.

The year 1980 finds her living and working in London ("mucho frio," says Teiko laconically) but by 1981 she's back to her beloved Granada where she resides and works today in a house on a hillside with an artist's view over the city. When they celebrate the annual New Year's fireworks display in Puerta Real, she has a privileged view of the bursting pyrotechnics: looking down from above.

Teiko formed part of Granada's Realejo group of printmakers for many years and has exhibited mainly in Spain and Japan, her last two shows being in Japan in 1999.

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