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Charlotte Salomon |
Charlotte Salomon, who was born in 1917 in Berlin, Germany and escaped to southern France, spent the last year of her life painting more than seven hundred scenes. In the final one, she is holding a paintbrush in her hand and facing the sea. Her back is filled with colors and the German words, Leben oder Theater? (Life or Theater?). She was twenty-five when she painted this self portrait. In 1943, at age twenty-six she asked Dr. Moridus to keep her paintings safe. She was rounded-up from Villefranche in late September 1943, sent to Drancy, leaving on a transport for Aushcwitz/Birkenau on October 7. Her name never appeared on a register, so one must conclude she was selected for the gas chambers upon arrival. Her paintings survived.
Information from:
To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era
by Mary Lowenthal Felstiner
HarperCollins Publishers,
New York, NY, 1994