Charlotte Salomon: Life? or Theatre?

This major exhibition features over 200 small gouaches on paper which German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon created as part of a larger body of work in the early 1940s when in hiding from Nazi oppressors. These remarkable gouaches unveil a vivid self-portrait spanning across all facets of Salomon’s existence: from a complicated family life, growing up in Berlin, the rise of the Nazis, to her exile to France.

In 1940 Salomon and her grandfather were interned by the French authorities in the Pyrenees; the same year her grandfather revealed an extensive family history of severe mental illness. In the chaotic conditions after the German invasion of France, they were released from the internment camp. Whilst in hiding between late 1940 and early 1942, in a burst of creativity, Salomon painted a life marked both by personal tragedy and external political events, combining images, texts and musical references, and pioneering a practice of honest and artistic self-expression.

Salomon’s life was cut short at the age of 26, and five months pregnant, when she was rearrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1943.