Born in
Montevideo, Uruguay, Breccia moved with his parents to
Buenos Aires, Argentina, when he was three years old. After leaving school, Breccia worked in a tripe packing plant and in 1938 he got a job for the magazine
El Resero, where he wrote articles and drew the covers. He began to work professionally in 1939, when he joined the publishing house Manuel Láinez. He worked on magazines such as
Tit-Bits,
Rataplán and
El Gorrión where he created
comic strips such as
Mariquita Terremoto,
Kid Río Grande,
El Vengador (based on a popular novel), and other adaptations. During the 1950s he became an honorary member of the "
Group of Venice" that consisted of expatriate
Italian artists such as
Hugo Pratt,
Ivo Pavone,
Horacio Lalia,
Faustinelli and
Ongaro. Other honorary members were
Francisco Solano López,
Carlo Cruz and
Arturo Perez del Castillo. With Hugo Pratt, he started the
Pan-American School of Art in Buenos Aires. In 1957 he joined publisher
Editorial Frontera, under the direction of
Héctor Germán Oesterheld, where he created several
Ernie Pike stories. In 1958 Breccia's series
Sherlock Time ran in the comic magazine
Hora Cero Extra, with scripts by Oesterheld. In 1960 he began to work for European publishers via a Buenos Aires-based art agency: for
British publishing house
Fleetway he drew a few
westerns and war stories. This period did not last long. His son
Enrique Breccia would also draw a few war stories for Fleetway in the late 1960s, such as
Spy 13. Breccia and Oesterheld collaborated to produce one of the most important comic strips in history,
Mort Cinder, in 1962. The face of the immortal Cinder is modeled after Breccia's assistant, Horacio Lalia, and the appearance of his companion, the
antique dealer Ezra Winston, is actually Breccia's own. Cinder and Winston's strip began on July 26, 1962, in issue Nº 714 of
Misterix magazine, and ran until 1964 . In 1968 Breccia was joined by his son,
Enrique, in a project to draw the comic biography of
Che, the life of
Che Guevara, again with a script provided by Oesterheld. In 1969 Oesterheld wrote a reboot of
El Eternauta, for the Argentinian magazine
Gente. Breccia drew the story with a decidedly experimental style, resorting to diverse techniques. The
resulting work was anything but conventional and moving away from the commercial. Breccia refused to modify its style, which added to the tone of the script, and was much different from
Francisco Solano López original. During the seventies, Breccia makes major graphic innovations in black and white and color with series like
Un tal Daneri and
Chi ha paura delle fiabe?, written by
Carlos Trillo. On the last one, a
satire based on
Brothers Grimm's tales, he plays with texture, mixing
collage,
acrylic and
watercolor. This technique will be used later in the eighties by American and British authors such as
Bill Sienkiewicz and
Dave McKean. Other stories include:
Cthulhu Mythos,
Buscavidas (text by Carlos Trillo), a
Historia grafica del Chile and
Perramus, inspired by the work of the poet
Juan Sasturain a pamphlet against the
dictatorship in Argentina. Breccia died in Buenos Aires in 1993. ==Partial bibliography==