Wider has written a fine young adult introduction to the life and art of the German-Jewish artist, Charlotte Salomon, who died at the age of 26 in Auschwitz. She was five-months pregnant. Wider presents the events of Charlotte’s story mostly in chronological order. She includes many images of Salomon’s modernist paintings (influenced by Matisse, van Gogh, and Chagall, among others)—all of them from the artist’s masterpiece, LIFE? OR THEATRE?, an autobiographical compilation of images (some presented in comic-book-like strips), words, and even directions about thematic music (from Bach and Bizet to folksongs) that should accompany the viewing and reading of the text. Salomon was heard humming as she painted in seclusion in a hotel room in southern France.

Charlotte’s short life was profoundly tragic. In 1926, when she was nine, her mother died—of the flu, she was told. As a young woman, she would learn that innumerable members of her maternal family, including her mother and aunt, had ended their own lives. Determined to become an artist from a young age, Charlotte attended art school in Berlin until the restrictions against Jews made this impossible. She fell in love with Alfred Wolfsohn, a much older man, voice coach, and possible lover of her opera-star stepmother, Paula. Having survived a highly traumatic experience in World War I, Wolfsohn had his own demons. His appearance in the young artist’s life was a critical one. His remarks about her painting gave her reason to believe in herself and a way to cope with the depression that increasingly loomed.

The darkness wasn’t only within; the dangers of Nazism were omnipresent and intensifying. After Kristallnacht in 1938, Charlotte’s father, Dr. Albert Salomon, a prominent Berlin surgeon and university professor, had been seized and taken to Sachsenhausen, a Nazi labour camp. Paula used her many connections to have him released. He ultimately was, weighing a mere 80 pounds. At this point, Albert and Paula knew the family must flee Berlin. Before they themselves escaped to Amsterdam, they first sent their daughter off to southern France, which was then unoccupied, to stay with her maternal grandparents, a disturbed and disturbing elderly couple. A condition of Charlotte’s visa was that she was to be caring for the pair. This was no ordinary task. Her grandmother became increasingly suicidal as Hitler’s troops advanced, finally succeeding in ending her life, and Charlotte was left with her brute of a grandfather, whose abuse was not only emotional but likely sexual as well. Beyond getting Charlotte to physical safety, Wider doesn’t comment on what her parents knew about the stability of the grandparents. Had Paula and Albert been aware of the dysfunction in these people and the deleterious impact it could have on an introverted, sensitive, psychologically vulnerable young woman?

Wider shows how Salomon’s passion for art was intensely therapeutic, saving her from a dark emotional inheritance and the torment of dealing with her grandfather. The young woman also received psychological support from a wealthy German-American woman, Ottilie Moore, who took Jewish refugee children into L’Hermitage, her villa in the south of France. Ottilie was an art collector. Recognizing Charlotte’s talent, she purchased, framed, and hung the artist’s work in her home, further boosting the young woman’s confidence. She also gave Salomon a place of refuge in which to escape her grandfather and to paint. In the end, LIFE? OR THEATRE would be dedicated to Ottilie.

Before Charlotte was transported to Auschwitz with Alexander Nagler, —Ottilie’s friend and former lover, whom Charlotte had married—she gave the entire bundle of her paintings to Dr. Georges Miridis, a family friend. “Keep the package safe” she told him; “It’s my whole life.” Yes, it was. It was not only a record of her brief, intense existence but also the very thing that had kept her alive.

While I’ve looked at a few articles on Charlotte Salomon, I haven’t yet read LIFE? OR THEATRE? or Mary Lower Felstiner’s “remarkable” biography of Salomon, TO PAINT HER LIFE. As a result, I’m unable to judge how well author Susan Wider has adapted the details of Salomon’s life and art for a young adult audience. My impression, however, is that this is a reliable work. It doesn’t appear to downplay or avoid the tragedy and horror of Charlotte’s life. It also celebrates the artist’s passionate commitment to creative work that prevented her from falling into complete despair. I recommend it.

The book is well researched and remarkably done. It will be added to the personal library if not the classroom library.

excellent read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

I never heard of Charlotte Salomon before reading this book. What an interesting, sad story. The way she painted her entire life was fascinating, but I found it very sad that so many in her family died in a particular way. However, she showed that there was hope to break the cycle. Charlotte’s life story can be an inspiration to young people who are compelled to create art. I found her pictorial autobiography a fascinating way to make a record of her life.

I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley, and these are my honest thoughts about it.

It’s My Whole Life is an incredible biography of an artist I had never heard of, but now am so greatly inspired by. What’s great about this book is that it is accessible for children but also rich for adults. It provides hope and joy without forsaking the grim details of Charlotte’s life, like her family history of suicide, World War II and the Holocaust. When processing her family’s history of suicide, Charlotte decides to “live for them all,” that she does not have to continue the pattern of generational trauma. Her urgent need to create art is something any artist can relate to, and her unique storytelling through art is fascinating and should be taught more often in art classrooms. Despite her grandparents’ discouragement, she maintained a determined spirit to create. Charlotte’s attitude of using art as healing, and doing her best to show love even to unlovable family members, is incredibly inspiring and a great model of hope for readers. This was such a compelling read that hooked me right from the start. Great for art, history and English classrooms. Absolutely, highly recommended.

In It’s My Whole Life, Susan Wider has written a book destined to sit beside The Diary of Anne Frank on any library bookshelf. The author takes her title from words that German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon said about a series of paintings that she did while hiding from the Nazis in the south of France. Susan uses the primary resource of the painted memoir called Life? or Theatre? by Charlotte Salomon herself and adds extensive historical research to write a biography of the artist hiding her work from the regime that would have destroyed it and her. Susan’s own background in the art world comes through in the expertise used to describe the work and world of Charlotte as an artist.

The biography is a blend of art and story as the reader follows Charlotte through her mother’s death, a difficult relationship with her grandparents, a colorful stepmother, and into adulthood with inclusion of the pictures she painted and assorted photographs for illustrations. In an eerie parallel to the Franks, with whom her family was acquainted, Charlotte remained safe almost to the end. In October 1943, she and her husband were deported and separated. She was gassed to death in Auschwitz. Fortunately, for those who love her art and care about her story, she had entrusted her memoir and paintings to a friend.

The listing suggests that this book is for 13 to 18-year-old readers. I would suggest that a better label would be 13 and up since the book holds great interest for art lovers and for those who are engaged with biography and history.

I found the history of this book and the development of Charlotte's art to be really interesting. I do think some of the personal aspects of her life dragged on quite a bit, which is odd considering the book is not that long. But it kept me interested and it was a nice, short biography of a woman who went through a very tragic time in history.

I really appreciated learning more about this artist, Charlotte Solomon, another bright light who perished in the Holocaust. Unfortunately, I never really engaged with the text itself. It read too simplistic for my tastes, something I am learning about my own reading tastes and why I now generally shy away from requesting/reading middle grade or young adult nonfiction. Additionally, the ebook format of the ARC interfered with the reading; the physical book will not have that problem. Finally, I wish that the author had somehow made clear where she obtained the paintings that fill the pages, something that in this edition does not get revealed until past the halfway point. I think that would have made those paintings even more poignant.

A great read for middle school kids wanting more information about the lives of artists or what life was life during World War 2. Easy to read, great stories, loved the way the chapters were laid out and the information that was chosen to be presented here. A solid non-fiction pick for MS age kids.

An excellent introduction to the fascinating life and work of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon who was murdered in the Holocaust. It’s intended for YA readers but it’s actually a great, all-round overview and introduction. Salomon’s remembered for her extraordinary, visual memoir Leben? oder Theatre? (Life? Or Theatre?) produced during her final years in exile in France, before she was rounded up by the Nazis. On arrival at Auschwitz in 1943, her pregnancy marked her out for immediate extermination, she was 26 years old. But her visual portfolio was kept by friends and later handed over to her father and stepmother who survived the war in hiding - ironically, they’d sent Charlotte to France because they believed she’d be safer there.

Leben? oder Theatre consists of hundreds of striking paintings intended to chronicle Salomon’s life, stretching back to her own mother’s childhood. They’re a vivid, evocative representation of family life in interwar Germany, of the rise of the Nazis, and of an individual woman struggling to be an artist and to overcome a traumatic legacy – her maternal family was marked by frequent instances of suicide including her own mother. Susan Wider’s a more-than-capable biographer who manages to convey an admirably-convincing sense of Salomon as an individual and as an artist, sketching out the details of her life and outlining her historical context, in under 200 pages. She handles challenging material in a sensitive way, not least the complexities of Charlotte’s role in the death of her maternal grandfather. What I particularly liked about Wider’s approach is that she doesn’t reduce Salomon the artist to her biographical features or the circumstances of her death, she’s careful to include accessible perspectives on the artwork itself, as well as Salomon’s artistic vision, and how her art was finally revealed to wider audiences.

The book’s lavishly illustrated with photographs and with full-colour reproductions of Salomon’s paintings, these alone make this worth picking up. Salomon conceived her innovative, autobiographical piece as a sort of song-play, she overlaid her artwork with tracing paper covered in text and allusions to pieces of music, almost like a film in stills. The result's a series of powerful, memorable images treading a fine line between conventional notions of painting including portraits and landscapes and a unique form of graphic novel; sometimes displaying the influence of her favourite painters from Chagall and Matisse to van Gogh, as well as hints of her time in art-school in Berlin with their referencing of elements of German Expressionism. They also have a slightly fierce, faux-naïve quality that reminds me of outsider art. Alongside the illustrations, there are extensive notes, timelines and a bibliography that includes links to the Jewish Cultural Quarter website in Amsterdam – where all of Charlotte’s memoir’s now available to view in digital form with translations from German to French and English.