Bretecher, Claire

(1940- )

   illustrator, narrator

   Born in Nantes, Claire Bretecher began her career as a comic-strip artist and narrator in 1964. One of her main characters, Cellulite, a romantic and silly medieval princess with an ungainly physique, appeared for the first time in the newspaper Pilote in 1969. Beginning in 1973, Bretecher published in Le Nouvel Observateur the stories of Frustrés, followed by Mères, then Agripinne. A strong satirist, she has poked fun at her contemporaries, caricaturing their language and conversation, ridiculing fashions and fads, and creating the most pertinent of social criticism through her drawings and dialogues.