Life? or Theatre? stops here where it begins. Acquaintances reported that Salomon was so possessed during its creation that she only rarely stopped to eat, drink and sleep. When she was finished, she handed all of the pages to a friend, saying, “Take good care of it. It is my life.”
Salomon survived for one year beyond the completion of Life? or Theatre? — a year that became increasingly dangerous after the Italians occupied Southern France and began to deport Jews to camps in Germany. Her grandfather passed away and Salomon, sheltering in a villa owned by an American woman, married the villa’s sole remaining resident, an Austrian refugee named Alexander Nagler. The marriage doomed the couple — it was Nagler’s attempt to get a marriage license at the local police station that gave them away as Jews. Salomon was pregnant when both she and her husband were picked up by the Gestapo. Salomon was killed immediately on arrival at Auschwitz; Nagler murdered a few months later.
COLOR
Visitors to Charlotte Salomon: Life? or Theatre? will be struck by the range and vivacity of Salomon’s color palette. In fact, on the third page of Life? or Theatre?, Salomon refers to the work as a ‘tri-colored play with music.’ But researchers who have investigated the gouaches have determined that Salomon only used three pigments to make the entire work — red, blue and yellow (some white was used to mix colors).
While no one is sure why she constrained herself in this way, it is clear that Salomon uses color to draw distinctions between acts and moods. In the Prelude, names are painted in blue; in the main section, red; and in the epilogue, yellow. Throughout, the color palette reflects the emotional landscape. Recollections of a happy holiday in the Bavarian Alps are drawn in bright yellows and greens. Her mother’s death is rendered in much gloomier hues.
TEXT
Salomon conceived of Life? or Theatre? as a singspiel, an 18th-century German predecessor of the operetta that alternated between spoken dialogue and musical numbers. Salomon’s actors often speak in rhyme, and the text of their lyrical dialogue is as an integral part of each painting’s composition.
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