Before her death in Auschwitz, Charlotte Salomon painted her life onto an imaginary stage, where she rewrote her true life story as a lyrical drama. This exhibit consists of 62 gouaches, from the series of 1,325 Charlotte completed, as well as comments.

Charlotte Salomon was born in Berlin in 1917 and grew up in an assimilated Jewish family as the daughter of a surgeon and a singer. The events of 1933 changed the family’s situation drastically, and Charlotte escaped in 1939 to her grandparent ‘ s estate in the South of France. The Gestapo arrested her there in 1943, and deported her to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. Before her arrest she gave her complete work to a friend reminding him: Please keep this safe: C’est tout ma vie! This is my entire life.

Events related to exhibit:

Lectures and Discussions by Dr. Paula Birnbaum
University of San Francisco, Visual Arts Department

February 6, 11:00 am, University Library Art Gallery
Life? Or Theater? Introducing Charlotte Salomon> “>

March 11, 4:00 pm, Warren Auditorium
” Visualizing Cultural Memory: The Legacy of Charlotte Salomon “

Film Showing (in German with English subtitles)
March 5, 7:30 pm, Schulz 2015 A/B
Die Liebe, mein Schatz, ist bodenlos
(Love, My Darling, is Bottomless), 1998.