Kaiko Moti Biography

Kaiko Moti

East Indian/French

1921-1989

Biography

Kaiko Moti was born Kaikobad Motiwalla in Bombay, India in 1921. He began private design classes at age fourteen and, between the years 1939 and 1946, he attended the Bombay School of Fine Arts. Moti moved to London, England in 1946 and continued his art studies at the Slade School of Art of the University College, where he received his Masters Degree in painting and sculpture.  Additional studies in sculpture and painting took place in the studios of F.E. Macwilliam Reginald Butler. 

By 1950 Moti had relocated to France, settling in Paris where he would eventually become a permanent resident. He attended the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere and studied sculpture with Ossip Zadkine at his atelier. However, his discovery of intaglio printmaking in 1952 at Atelier 17, under experimental printmaker Stanley William Hayter, led to a lifelong passion for etching and aquatint. At the workshop he would pioneer many techniques in the field of viscosity printing, developing a painterly tonality on the plate that was greatly informed by Old Master and Romantic painters such as J.M.W. Turner.

Moti began exhibiting in 1953, and showed internationally at the Venice Biennale, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Basel Art Fair, the Art Expo and the New York Public Library. He won various awards and is represented in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Paris Musee d’Art Moderne, Bibliotheque Nationale, and the Hammer Museum at University of California, Los Angeles. Moti was an honorary member of the Academy of Florence.  Moti died in Paris in 1989.