A victim of Nazism, Charlotte Salomon never lost a sense of wonderment so strong it amazed even herself. Appreciate it fully at the Musée Masséna.
A Berlin-born German-Jewish artist murdered at Auschwitz, Charlotte Salomon was virtually unknown to the public until the publication in 2014 of David Foenkinos’s book, Charlotte, which won the Prix Renaudot literary prize. To this day there have been few exhibitions of her work in France. Salomon produced an oeuvre of incredible intensity, vivacity and humanity. “The exhibition at Paris’s museum of Jewish art and history in 2006 left me speechless,” admits Marie Lavandier, curator of the Nice exhibition that features gouaches, drawings, pastels and previously unseen archive material from Salomon’s monumental work, Life? or Theatre?.
Joyous resilience
Despite appalling experiences ranging from three generations of family suicides to a Côte d’Azur exile from which she sensed she would never return, this woman chose to create. “You don’t treat Charlotte Salomon like anyone else. No grave bears witness to her death, so I wanted this exhibition to be superb,“ Marie Lavandier explains. Consequently, a dynamic, brightly-coloured display design leads visitors through Salomon’s richly detailed “song play” (as she subtitled it) mixing graphic novel, film synopsis and operetta libretto, which Salomon composed using the three primary colours plus white, blending them to obtain the nuances she desired. Through it she recounts her life with the people who meant the most to her – her grandparents, her first love Alfred Wolfsohn... Writing too features extensively in her work, as do musical references, emphasising or contrasting.
A life story and a world of art to discover in an exhibition rich in textual content and accompanied by a soundtrack composed specially for it.
*Jusqu’au 24 mai
Until 24 May
Nice, 65 rue de France
Tél. 04 93 91 19 26
www.massena-nice.org
Côteweb 2021, création de site Internet sur Nice