Blutch

French cartoonist Blutch was born Christian Hincker in 1967 in Strasbourg, where he studied art at the École supérieure des Arts décoratifs. In 1988 his first short stories appeared in the magazine "Fluide Glacial". Drawing is at the center of the thematically and formally enormously diverse work of Blutch, who today is considered one of the most important and virtuoso current draftsmen of the new French comics. His possibilities as a draftsman and painter range from quick, expressive ink drawings to subtle painting in free technique. In his often experimental works, the artist repeatedly crosses the line into abstraction or, as in his early work "Peplum," a free adaptation of Petronius' "Satyricon," leaves it to the reader to freely associate blanks. Indeed, there is hardly a subject that Blutch has not tackled, and his stories are at home in all genres, whether science fiction, mystery, western, drama, or comedy. In 1998, the autobiographical short story collection "Le Petit Christian" was published, reviving his childhood in Alsace in the 1970s, which Blutch continued with a second part in "Charlie Hebdo" in 2008. After countless black-and-white albums, he surprised with a color album in 2002, the surreal "Vitesse Moderne." Blutch has worked for numerous publishers and in a wide variety of collaborations, has illustrated books, designed posters for filmmaker Alain Resnais or the Banlieues bleues jazz festival, drawn for "Libération," "The New Yorker" and "Les Inrockuptibles" and collaborated on animated films such as the nightmarish "Peur(s) du noir." Blutch won the Grand Prix de la Ville d'Angoulême, the most important European award in comics, in 2009, after which he presided over the Angoulême Comics Festival the following year. The retrospective at the Cartoonmuseum Basel brings together originals from the albums, paintings, illustrations, posters and excerpts from animated films.


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