Gouache from Life? or Theatre?

We present today's work thanks to The Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, which marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) with a special exhibition dedicated to her artistic legacy: the artwork Life? Or Theatre? (on display until 25 March 2018). Salomon was extremely interesting artist whose life was tragically ended by the Holocaust.

“The war raged on and I sat there by the sea and looked deep into the heart of humanity. I became my mother, my grandmother, in fact I was all the characters who take part in my play. I learned to travel all their paths and became all of them.”

In this work Salomon takes a leap back in time and finds a form to depict her family’s secret history. By supplementing her own memories with imagined scenes and narrative lines, she reconstructs her life and depicts her new perspective on her family. In her quest for the truth about her life, Salomon takes on the guise of her protagonists and tells their stories through words and songs. By this, she seems not only to want to reconstruct herself and her prehistory but also to discover the reasons for the suicides in her family. With the aid of shifting perspectives, she zooms in and out on her protagonists and their tragic lives. As she works, she gains an insight into their experiences and motivations and also into her own prehistory and childhood. In a series of detailed scenes, the protagonists move through the story, as in a cartoon or film storyboard. Salomon achieves this effect partially through repetitive scenes that lead the viewer through the story. The lines, texts, and musical references on the accompanying transparent overlays interact with the underlying paintings, thus emphasising the movement of the characters from one event to another.

If you want to learn more about her, read our article "Charlotte Salomon: Death, Life and Theater" on DailyArtDaily.com