Charlotte Salomon

Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) grew up in a bourgeois German-Jewish milieu in Berlin. She lived a carefree life as a young girl until the assumption of power by the national socialists in 1933. Nevertheless, she almost completed her studies at the Academy of Art. In January 1939 Charlotte fled Berlin and travelled to her grandparents in the South of France. They had already left Nazi Germany in 1933. In 1940, after the start of the Second World War, her grandmother committed suicide. Only then was Charlotte told that her mother had also ended her life in 1926. The 24-years-old Charlotte processed this turbulent family history and her experiences as a Jewess in Berlin in an extraordinary manner. In her distress she thought back to her lover, singing teacher, Alfred Wolfsohn (1896-1962). He told her, among other things, that in order to love life completely, she would have to embrace and understand its opposite – death. She decided to save herself by means of his ideas and as an alternative to suicide to undertake ‘something totally, insanely eccentric.’ She withdrew herself completely and began to paint in an unprecedented, creative explosion. In this way, she gradually recreated her life. She used everything she had inside of her: her artistry, her visual and musical memory, her insight into the personalities of the members of her family, her intellectual baggage, humour, and the inspiration she drew from her love for Wolfsohn. Read more