Charlotte Solomon could have been the Anne
Franck of the drawing. Between 1940 and 1942, this German young
woman will paint the martyrdom of terror Nazi through 1325
gouaches. Drawings of the heart, heart, anguish, to crunch on
sharp the daily scenes of her Jewish family having fled the German
plague Nazi. Terrible suicides enameled the childhood of the
girl : aunt, mother, grandmother. Premonitory disappearances
that Charlotte will entitle: "Life? or
Theater?" in her collection of moving drawings. Born
in 1917 in Berlin in a richly established family, daughter of surgeon,
she moves in the German cultural and social life most refined,
specially in
the opera. Despite of racial repression
which forbid the Jews to attend the official schools, she integrates in
1935, the Union of the National Schools of Arts Free and Applied of
Berlin. Nevertheless, one of its professors will require of her
to refuse its first price of the Art schools, which would dangerously
expose her to the eyes of the authorities. The situation becoming
horrible, Solomon, grandparents, parents and children, leave Germany
and will settle to Villefranche-sur-Mer. Charlotte draws each
day, with passion and despair, until the last hour. She is 28
years old when the Nazis find her, arrest her, send her to Auschwitz
where she will be assassinated as of her arrival, May 9, 1945.
The whole of its drawings were preciously preserved by the people who
sheltered the family at Villefranche. This exhibition reveals us
for the first time 278 drawings of Charlotte. True sketches,
speaking between the caricature, the expressionism, the
tragic illustration. Drawings we have to read and listen.
