FAREWELL CLAIRE BRETECHER

AUTHOR OF THE FRUSTERS AND AGRIPPINE

"It is with deep sadness that Dargaud editions announce the death of Claire Bretécher on February 10, 2020, at the age of 79," the editor said in a press release.

"Escape from boredom"

Claire Bretécher had quickly launched into comics "to escape boredom," she said.

In the early 1960s, after dropping Fine Arts, she taught drawing and delivered illustrations to the newspapers of the Bayard group. "Press drawings, strips, comics, whatever, I wanted to draw and my goal was to eat thanks to that," she explained.

Press comics

In 1963, she was invited by Goscinny to draw her Rhesus Factor in The bone marrow. She then collaborated with the Tintin newspaper and then with Spirou where she created the Gnan-Gnan. His collaboration also begins with Pilote, always at the request of Goscinny, where his Season Salads are published, and the adventures of his first great heroine: Cellulite, a completely crazy medieval princess. Then she embarked with Gotlieb and Mandryka on the adventure of L'Echo des savanes. In 1973, she invented her hilarious, libidinous dog character, Le Bolot, for Le Sauvage. She also begins her collaboration with the Nouvel Observateur. It is the birth of the Frustrated. Then later, she gives birth to Agrippina, the unbearable and endearing teenager.

A talent for showing human relationships

Having launched into self-publishing, in 1988 she published the first album of Agrippina's adventures, followed by six others and a series of 26 cartoons broadcast on Canal +. Her gallery of characters allowed her to tackle social issues that she very often identified well before most of her contemporaries. To the point that in 1976 Roland Barthes will say that she is the "sociologist of the year".

Among the pioneers of comics, she was able to impose a style, a tone, an offbeat look of total originality. Observer detached from her time, she crunches through them with immense self-mockery.

She also practiced painting with talent, producing a series of striking portraits of her loved ones and uncompromising self-portraits.

“A personality as disturbing as it is endearing, Claire Bretécher has traced a unique path in comics. His humor and his freedom of spirit were immense, they will be missed by all his readers, we already miss him, ”said his editor.