Bretécher was born in
Nantes, France, and was raised in a
convent. She received her first break as an illustrator when she was asked to provide the artwork for
Le facteur Rhésus by
René Goscinny for ''L'Os à moelle
in 1963. She went on to work for several popular magazines and in 1969 invented the character "Cellulite". In 1972, she founded the Franco-Belgian comics magazine L'Écho des savanes, with
Gotlib and
Mandryka'' . She self published her first 25 books and is stil one of the only artists to work for all three of the 9th art's founding journals:
Tintin,
Spirou and
René Goscinny's Pilote. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she published successful collections, such as
The Destiny of Monique (1982). In 2001, Bretécher's series
Agrippine was adapted into a 26-episode TV series by
Canal+. In 2015, the
Centre Pompidou organized the first monographic exhibit of Claire Bretécher's work. The exhibit retraced her career from the 1960s to the 2000s. This exhibit investigated the history of France over the last fifty years, thus casting light on its social, cultural, and political changes in France, all captured by Claire Bretécher's work. Claire Bretécher was the widow of French constitutionalist , with whom she had a son. She died in
Paris on 10 February 2020, aged 79, after suffering for some years from
Alzheimer's disease. ==Awards==