The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Front and back of a gouache painting. On our left, the front paints a white dinner table around which fifteen people with light skin tones gather. The people are outlined loosely in blue and colored, like the entire scene, with splotchy strokes of color. On our right is a sketch with looping strokes of a figure with their head tilted, hair gathered in a bun at the nape of the neck, and mouth slightly open.

Dinner Party (recto); Dinner Party with Presumed Portrait Study of Paula Lindberg (verso)

1940–1942

Charlotte Salomon

(German, 1917–1943)
Germany, 20th century
gouache
Sheet: 29.3 x 19.9 cm (11 9/16 x 7 13/16 in.)
Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Whitehill Art Purchase Endowment Fund 2002.8
Location: Not on view

Description

Charlotte Salomon's main achievement was a group of almost 800 small gouache paintings on paper entitled Life? or Theater? (Leben? oder Theater?), which forms a single narrative conceived as an illustrated book. The series tells the story of the artist's life through thinly disguised characters meant to represent her circle of friends and family. Important themes include the young artist's own struggle with her family's past and with her need to express herself artistically. Salomon was murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp when she was only 26 years old. Her parents found Life? or Theater? after her death when they visited the small French village where she had lived before her deportation by the Nazis. They eventually donated the entire series to the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. This particular piece was probably one that Salomon either made for Life? or Theater? and later edited out, or is something she created as an alternate version of one of its scenes. It shows a dinner party with Salomon's stepmother, Paula Lindberg, at the head of the table before a group of guests. Salomon greatly admired her stepmother and represented her in Life? or Theater? through a character named Paulinka Bimbam.
  • 1943
    Ottilie Moore, Villefranche sur-Mer, France
    Thérèse de la Corre, Villefranche sur-Mer, France
    Private collection, Canada
    2002
    with Mary Ryan Gallery, Inc., New York
    2002
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • {{cite web|title=Dinner Party (recto); Dinner Party with Presumed Portrait Study of Paula Lindberg (verso)|url=false|author=Charlotte Salomon|year=1940–1942|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2002.8