Charlotte Salomon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) was a German artist born in Berlin. Her mother committed suicide in 1926; her grandmother committed suicide at the outbreak of the Second World War. Salomon fled Berlin in 1939, settling in still-unoccupied Vichy, living first with her grandfather and later her husband, a German music teacher, for three years. Salomon and her husband were betrayed to the Gestapo following the Nazi invasion of France. Before the transport to Auschwitz arrived, Salomon entrusted more than 1,000 gouaches to a friend. These included her autobiographical series of paintings Life? or Theater? (Leben? oder Theater?) consisting of 769 paintings painted between 1940 and 1942. She was murdered in a death camp in October 1943.

[edit] Life? or Theater? (Leben? oder Theater?)

This series of gouaches is an extraordinary and unique document. In great detail it tells the story of Charlotte's family and friends, her own internal life, the political background, and her obsessive love affair. Charlotte Salomon had an artistic training and her household was highly cultured. The way she tells this story is full of tragedy, but the telling also reveals Charlotte's sly humour and wit. The series starts out with highly detailed and multi-layered images of the life and relationship between her mother and father. As the story unfolds the style gets broader and more expressionistic. The last 'chapters' are almost violent in their expression, as if Charlotte is aware of her impending fate and can hardly wait to write and paint the details of her story as the Gestapo close in on her life.

A large part of Life? or Theater? is about her obsession with 'Amadeus Daberlohn', a voice teacher she met through her stepmother 'Paulinka Bimbam' (Charlotte gives all her characters humorous, often punning, pseudonyms). These sections are honest and compelling accounts of her passionate relationship with Alfred Wolfson - the one person who took her artistic work seriously. It is not possible to know if Charlotte's version of her relationship with Wolfson corresponds with reality, but he was undoubtedly her first love.

Life? or Theater? is not only a series of paintings. It includes a script in the form of words that are either themselves in the form of paintings, written into the paintings, or presented as overlays to the images. It also has a 'soundtrack' - music chosen by Charlotte that reinforces her stories. These range from Nazi marching songs to Schubert leider and extracts from the music of Mozart and Mahler. The work is operatic in scale, highly modern in execution, unique in its form, and has an enduring power.

The collection only began to be exhibited in the 1960's, and was an unexpected sensation when shown at the London Royal Academy in 1998. The work is still relatively little known, in part because Charlotte Salomon's work doesn't appear on the international art market, as the whole archive belongs to the protective Charlotte Salomon Foundation based at the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam.

Their have been several other exhibitions of parts of Life? or Theater?, and a number of films and plays made about Charlotte Salomon's life, notably Company of Angels by the UK theatre company Horse and Bamboo Theatre.