Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943), a young German artist, painted her autobiography in the midst of World War II.

During the war a German Jewish artist named Charlotte Salomon recorded the story of her life. She was 24 years old when she began her autobiography, a refugee from Nazi Germany living on the French Riviera. As autobiography, there is nothing like Salomon's work: Life or Theater": An Operetta. It unfolds in 1,350 paintings of astonishing vividness and force, with acts and scenes, captions and narrative texts, dialogues, commentaries, and musical accompaniments. The characters, based on her own family and friends, have fictional names, and the whole work takes the form of a painted play. After 1980 it achieved international renown through publications, film, drama, and popular exhibits in Amsterdam, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Miami, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and elsewhere.

On April 16, 1917, Salomon was born in Berlin to a family distinguished in the medical profession...