Larissa Bertonasco, born and raised in southern Germany, has lived and worked in Hamburg since 1992. She is a member of the FRITZEN studio collective in Hamburg-St. Pauli and a co-founder of the SPRING collective of female illustrators, established in 2004, which has published an annual collection ever since. She studied illustration at HAW Hamburg in Anke Feuchtenberger’s class and has been working as a freelance illustrator since graduating in 2003. In 2023/24, she was a fellow of the ‘Art as Social Practice’ programme at the Frankfurt Theatre Academy. Drawing is at the heart of her artistic practice. She creates illustrations, comics, installations, murals and live-drawn light projections, both as independent works and for a wide variety of clients. Her work moves between autobiographical storytelling, social research, political engagement and art in social spaces. A current focus is her comic and research project on her Italian grandfather’s involvement in the war in Ethiopia, in which she explores issues of fascism, colonial violence, memory and transgenerational trauma.