: A Song-play), the largest known artwork made by a Jewish person who died in the Holocaust,[1] consisting of 769 individual works painted between 1941 and 1943 in the south of France, while Salomon was in hiding from the Nazis.

In October 1943 Salomon, 5 months pregnant at that time, was captured and deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered by the Nazis soon after her arrival.

At a time when German universities were restricting their Jewish student quota to 1.5% of the student body (providing their fathers had served on the front line in the First World War), Salomon succeeded in gaining admission to the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandte Kunst (United State Schools for Pure and Applied Arts) in 1936.

She studied painting there for two years, but by summer 1938 the antisemitic policy of Hitler's Third Reich meant that it was too dangerous for her to continue attending the college and she did not return, despite winning a prize.

They lived in a cottage in the grounds of a luxurious villa L'Ermitage (now demolished) owned by a wealthy American, Ottilie Moore, who went on to shelter a number of Jewish children.

Salomon left L'Ermitage with her grandparents to live in an apartment in Nice, where her grandmother attempted to hang herself in the bathroom.

Her grandmother had stockpiled Veronal and morphine for when the German army arrived, but when she was denied access to her medication, she instead tried and failed to hang herself before eventually succeeding by throwing herself out of a window.

"[14] His constant request to share his bed with her and her own words in a confession letter of 35 pages, made public in 2015, suggest sexual abuse.

[14] Salomon rented a room in the pension La Belle Aurore in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, and there she commenced the work that would outlive her.

[15] The entire work was a slightly fantastic autobiography preserving the main events of her life – her mother's death, studying art in the shadow of the Third Reich, her relationship with her grandparents – but altering the names and employing a strong element of fantasy.

is about her obsession with Amadeus Daberlohn, a voice teacher she met through her stepmother Paulinka Bimbam (Salomon gives all her characters humorous, often punning, pseudonyms).

These sections are honest and compelling accounts of her passionate relationship with Alfred Wolfsohn – the one person who took her artistic work seriously.

Steinberg is reminded of Franz Kafka's short story In the Penal Colony, in which sentence of execution is inscribed on the victim's back, and describes the image as combining the innocence of the mermaid of Copenhagen with violent narrative.

The center image is the final example of the transparent overlays that occur throughout the work, while the rightmost image is the gouache most closely associated with the work, depicting Charlotte Salomon kneeling before the sea with brush and paper in her hand and the words Life or Theater inscribed on her back.

The concluding words of the epilogue, quoting ideas of Alfred Wolfsohn,[29] are as follows: ...und sie sah – mit wachgeträumten Augen all die Schönheit um sich her – sah das Meer spürte die Sonne und wusste: sie musste für eine Zeit von der menschlichen Oberfläche verschwinden und dafür alle Opfer bringen – um sich aus der Tiefe ihre Welt neu zu schaffen Und dabei entstand das Leben oder das Theater???

... And with dream awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew she had to vanish for a while from the human surface and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths.

[32] While celebrated composers such as Mozart and Schubert are known to have worked in the form, Singspiel often introduced folksongs, marches and narrative songs into its repertoire.

By the early twentieth century, at the time of Salomon's appropriation of the form into her work, the Singspiel had ceased to be a contemporary form (although Ralph Benatzky's popular 1930 work Im weißen Rößl is a singspiel and Kurt Weill introduced the term 'songspiel' to describe some of his collaborations with Berthold Brecht).

In remembrance of the artist, French composer Marc-André Dalbavie dedicated an opera to her: Charlotte Salomon, commissioned by the Salzburg Festival.

The world premiere took place at Salzburg's Felsenreitschule on 28 July 2014 on a panorama stage of 30 meters, conducted by the composer and directed by Luc Bondy.

The two Charlotte Salomon roles were spoken by German Johanna Wokalek and sung by French Marianne Crebassa.

[37] In February 2015, the Musiktheater im Revier (MiR) in Gelsenkirchen presented a ballet-opera by Michelle DiBucci based on life and work of the artist.

Its title was Charlotte Salomon: Der Tod und die Malerin ("Death and the Painter"); it was choreographed and directed by Bridget Breiner.

[38] DiBucci was originally commissioned to compose an opera on the life and work of Salomon by director Marie Zimmermann [de] for the 2010 Ruhrtriennale.

Several years later, DiBucci was approached by choreographer Bridget Breiner and asked to adapt the work into a full-length ballet.

[40] In 2017, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Charlotte Salomon's birth, Charlotte: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music (Composer: Aleš Brezina, Librettist: Alon Nashman, Director/Scenographer: Pamela Howard)[41] was presented at the Luminato Festival in Toronto, and at the World Stage Design Festival in Taipei, Taiwan.

[42] This singspiel, which "gives Salomon a wonderfully authentic and persuasive voice onstage",[43] has music by Czech composer Aleš Březina [cs], a libretto by Canadian performer/writer Alon Nashman, and is directed and designed by UK-based Pamela Howard, author of What is Scenography?.

Charlotte: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music was developed with the assistance of Canadian Stage Company, and the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts.