Biography

Chikako Taketani was born in Kyoto in 1962 and trained in Fine Arts in Japan. In 2003 she settled in Ripoll, where she lived and painted for over a decade.

Her painting — intimate and introspective — arose from a personal search. Girls in kimono, a recurring motif, embodied her states of mind. The face was gradually erased: first the mouth, then the nose, finally even the eyes, in a conscious pursuit of depth and silence.

In her last years, her technique evolved toward the application of glues, pigments and adhesives, creating transparencies and glazes. The train journeys she made to visit her ailing father in Japan run through this final stage: travel, time, life.

Her work was selected for the Girona Art Biennial (2006, 2008) and the Honda Painting Prize of La Garriga (2006). She held a solo show at the Temple Romà in Vic and collaborated with her husband, the sculptor Domènec Batalla — including the murals of Casa Altamira (Costa Rica).

Known to friends as «la Chika», she loved Ripoll so deeply that her brother chose not to repatriate her. She is buried there.