Leven? Of theater? Charlotte Salomon

A graphic novel avant la lettre, a timeless masterpiece, now published in its entirety for the first time in a unique edition. The rediscovery of an unparalleled talent in the tradition of Chagall, Bannard and Picasso, exhibited in Germany, France, the Netherlands and America in the coming years.
The life and work of Charlotte Salomon inspired not only a novel, but also a feature film, a documentary, an opera and a ballet.

‘Life? Or theatre? is one of the most beautiful autobiographical works in art history.’ – NRC Handelsblad

Charlotte Salomon (Berlin, 1917 – Auschwitz, 1943) was the only child of the surgeon Albert Salomon and Franze Grunwald. She grew up in an assimilated Jewish family. In 1935 she was admitted to the art academy. When the persecution of Jews in Germany intensified after Kristallnacht, Charlotte went to her grandparents in the south of France. After the start of the war, she and her grandfather were interned in the Gurs camp in the Pyrenees. In July, due to her grandfather’s old age, they were allowed to return to Nice, where a doctor advised her to resume her artistic work to process the experiences of the last years. In letters to her parents, Charlotte wrote that she had started an extensive cycle of gouaches. This is how the series “Life? Or theater?”, containing more than 1,300 autobiographical illustrations, was born. She completed this extensive work of art in 1942. With an afterword by Nina Weijers.

“This is my whole life,” said Charlotte Salomon as she presented Doctor Moridis in Villefranche-sur-mer with the enormous suitcase to secure her work. The suitcase contained her life’s work Life? Or theatre?, the result of her months of restless work, withdrawn to her small boarding house room.

Salomon called upon everything she had within her: her perfect visual memory, her understanding of the characters of her family and friends, her education at the Berlin Academy of Arts, and above all, the inspiration from her brief, intense love for her stepmother’s singing teacher. He taught Charlotte that only those who experience the deepest misery are capable of making something sublime out of their existence, of creating ‘theater’.

In this way, Salomon created her unique life’s work, a completely self-contained work of art that integrates image, text and music. A novel consisting of 781 gouaches and hundreds of drawings, a mix of paintings, texts and musical notes that tells the story of a family between the First World War and 1940. The influences of George Grosz or Modigliani can be recognized in various gouaches, while other gouaches are previews of the contemporary graphic novel.

The story shimmers with beauty and precision and is a colorful portrait of the twentieth century. Life? Or theatre? reveals itself to the reader as a visual novel of the highest class, and is at the same time a reflection on the versatility of our existence, on passion and passion. A moving story about a young woman and her threatened life. Life? Or theatre? is a work of art that is unique in its kind.