{"product_id":"9783836598651","title":"Charlotte Salomon : Life? or Theatre? - Evelyn Benesch","description":"When German artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) handed her gouache series Life? or Theater? over to a friend, she beseeched him to \"take good care of it, it is my entire life.\" A few months later, the five-months pregnant Charlotte was picked up by a Gestapo truck, deported to Drancy, and then on to Auschwitz, where she died upon arrival at the age 26. The work Salomon left behind is, in a very real sense, her pi�ce de r�sistance - in her own words, \"something wildly eccentric.\" A cycle of nearly 1,300 autobiographical gouaches, it combines creative force with pioneering personal narrative into one shattering document of self-expression. Divided into three sections, the gouaches unveil a vivid self-portrait spanning across all facets of Charlotte's existence: from a complicated family life, marked by the suicides of nearly all female relatives; growing up in Berlin; her close relation to singing teacher Alfred Wolfsohn; the rise of the Nazis; to her exile to France in 1939. Throughout, the artist challenges these destructive forces by deploying playful pseudonyms and fantastical elements alongside emotional candor, remarkable observation, and a meticulous visual memory. Her film strip-like sequences are interspersed not only with words but also musical suggestions, making Life? or Theater? the storybook for a whole musical, years before the heyday of that genre. Without comparison, the gouaches are a triumph of personal truth and individual expression. Published here with a selection of the most important pieces, Life? Or Theatre? is an unrivaled opus magnum from a great and ambitious artist, dark with her early death, but luminous with her precision, her lyricism, and her courage.","brand":"Evelyn Benesch","offers":[{"title":"608 pages \/ 06\/08\/2026 \/ Individual artists, art monographs","offer_id":57430754361719,"sku":"9783836598651","price":24.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0682\/9454\/1624\/files\/9783836598651.jpg?v=1788340456","url":"https:\/\/gulpfictionbooks.com\/products\/9783836598651","provider":"Gulp Fiction","version":"1.0","type":"link"}