The family returned to Lisbon, where Tereza finished her primary education at the private Colégio Inglês, or English College.

[This paragraph needs citation(s)] Despite her father being a Republican, her education tended towards the bourgeois ideal of the time: knowing how to play the piano and speak French.

In this series, she depicts the gestures and tired faces of the children wrinkled by dehydration while working in the nearby glass factories.

[citation needed] From 1944 to 1985, she taught drawing at different schools, including the Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio.

[4] With several drafts (such as a charcoal series on child workers with a neorealistic tendency), it was in 1967 that Tereza Arriaga would become a more consistent and professional painter.

[3] The dominant semiological element varies: the “bioburgos” are, according to the author, ourselves, but biologic, which means they are inserted in a wider system as all the animals have towns.

These initiatives included working-class clubs and associations, and conferences on women's rights, music or history, where she would take intellectuals and artists from Lisbon, such as Fernando Lopes Graça, Maria Isabel Aboim Inglês or the historian Flausino Torres to industrial towns around the country.

[citation needed] During that same time, she became involved in antifascist movements and events, which culminated in her arrest by the PIDE and 110 days of imprisonment in the political prison of Caxias.