A SUITCASE IN THE OLIVE GROVE:Charlotte Salomon’s Fierce Waltz With History

The story starts with a battered leather suitcase, the kind that creaks when you unlatch it. Inside are 769 sheets of cheap French drawing paper, layered like stage flats: gouache scenes, penciled dialogue, and musical notes scrawled in the margins. Together they form Leben? oder Theater?—Life? or Theatre?—the autobiographical epic Charlotte Salomon painted in hiding between 1940 and 1942.