Charlotte Salomon

Works by Charlotte Salomon at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. "...Charlotte Salomon was raised in a cultured German-Jewish environment. In January 1939, following Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, she fled Berlin. She travelled to her grandparents in the South of France, who had left Nazi Germany back in 1933. Her grandmother committed suicide upon the outbreak of World War II. Only then did Charlotte learn that her mother had also committed suicide in 1926.

Charlotte found a very special way of dealing with the suicides in her family and her experiences growing up Jewish in Berlin. She withdrew and started painting. Outdoors, in sunny southern France, she created Life? or Theatre?.

In her work Charlotte reaches out to her audience by mingling fantasy and reality. Her family and friends are the actors and have appropriate pseudonyms. Her texts are simple, laced with quotations from German literature. Charlotte also indicates music that increases the dramatic effect. She calls Life? or Theatre? a Singespiel or lyrical drama.

In 1943 shortly before Salomon was deported to Auschwitz she gave the gouaches to a friend of the family, saying: 'Take good care of them. They are my whole life.'"