Butzer was born in Stuttgart, West Germany and lives in Rangsdorf near Berlin. He makes semi-abstract paintings that feature cartoon-like characters and objects. Butzer is interested in the comic genre, whose ambivalence comes on the one hand from a childlike inflation of effect and on the other hand from an artificial lifelessness, set beyond morality. Butzer’s work has been called Science-Fiction-Expressionism, he is influenced by James Ensor, Willem de Kooning, and Phillip Guston. In 1997, he helped to found Akademie Isotrop in Hamburg.