Charlotte

Last Sunday I went to an exhibition of the work of Charlotte Salomon. I've seen her self-portrait so often, I knew the name and the face but I never really knew the story. I never realised she wasn't just a painter, and I didn't know the part her art played in her life, and how important it was to her.

She was born in Germany in 1917 as a Jewish girl, and had to flee the country in 1938. She went to her grandparents in France. Her grandmother committed suicide when the war broke out, and then she was told about the suicide of other family members, including her mother. She dealt with this by withdrawing into herself and by creating a series of works of art entitled Life? or Theatre? The series consists of over 800 gouaches. In 1943 she was deported to Auschwitz with her husband, just a few months after their wedding. She was killed on 10 October 1944 while she is four months pregnant. Her husband was killed on January 1 1944.

The art works are unusual and moving, they tell her story and recreate the people that were important in her life. Some look like very sophisticated cartoons, drawn in great detail, others are very simple drawings or pieces of text, and together they tell the story. She was very open and honest in her work, especially considering the time she lived in. The works on show at the museum at the moment are ones that were not included in her own final selection, she painted many more gouaches than she included in her own story. Standing there looking at the pictures it is hard to imagine that they were painted in the course of just a few years by a woman in her early twenties.

Most of the gouaches are available online at the Jewish Historical Museums website: Salomon at the museum