Charlotte Salomon: 'Life? or Theatre?'  31 March 2011

Complete collection now online available

Charlotte Salomon's work 'Life? or Theatre?' is now online available. Browsing through the work is now possible by using the webapp for iPad and Android tablets. The total output consists of 1325 gouaches and transparencies. Many of these were rejected by Charlotte herself, and what developed was a numbered series of around 800 paintings.

Salomon's work has belonged to the collection of the Jewish Historical Museum since 1971. This multi-faceted and moving work of art has served as a source of inspiration for many people working in the fields of literature, film, opera, and drama.

Charlotte Salomon grew up in Berlin, where she attended the academy of art. At twenty years of age she fled from Germany, immediately after Kristallnacht ('the Night of Broken Glass') on 9 November 1938. She went to stay with her grandparents, who had fled from Nazi Germany earlier and were living in the south of France. In 1940, after the outbreak of the Second World War, her grandmother committed suicide. It was only then that Salomon found out that her mother too had killed herself, in 1926. Salomon took up painting as a way of dealing with these dramatic events. That is the origin of her life's work Life? or Theatre?