Krystine Kryttre

Krystine Kryttre (born 1958) is an American alternative comics artist, painter, writer, and performer from San Francisco. currently based in Los Angeles. Her work is dark, often explicit, and visually distinctive, which has been described as "scratchboard gothic."[1] Her work has been exhibited in galleries since the late 1980s, including a number of solo shows in Los Angeles.

Kryttre first published her comics in punk zines published out of San Francisco. She moved to Los Angeles in 1991.

She has been published in Weirdo, Raw, Wimmen's Comix, Tits & Clits Comix, The Narrative Corpse, Comix 2000, Snake Eyes, Art Forum, Buzzard, and Twisted Sisters.[2] Her relationship with Dori Seda is chronicled in Kryttre's story "'Bimbos From Hell," originally published in Weirdo #22 (Last Gasp, Spring 1988).[3] In 1990, Cat-Head Comics released Death Warmed Over, a collection of her comics.[1] Another collection, The #@@! Coloring Book, was released by Last Gasp in 2001.

After making comics from 1985–1992, Kryttre shifted focus to painting from 1994–2003, and taxidermy from 1994–2002. Her most recent work has returned to painting that engages with "the mythic landscape."[4] She has also produced a series of satirical toys called "Abu & 'Mo", inspired by the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

In the mid-1990s, Kryttre worked on the Nickelodeon television pilot Anemia and Iodine, which aired on Nick's cartoon showcase KaBlam! in 1996.

From 2002–2008 Kryttre was a member of the L.A.-based Corpus Delicti Butoh Performance Lab, which performed stage pieces and guerilla street theater in public spaces.

The cartoonist and critic Scott McCloud, in Understanding Comics (1993), wrote that "in Krystine Kryttre's art, the curves of childhood and the mad lines of a [Edvard] Munch create a crazy toddler look."[5]