Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Siegfried Charoux artist

Siegfried Charoux was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1896 and initially specialised in political cartoons for popular Austrian magazines before shifting to sculptural works later in his career. Following the rise of Nazism, Charoux fled Austria in 1935 due to growing hostility towards his left-wing political views. Settling in England, Charoux was initially interned on the Isle of Man in 1940 as a so-called 'enemy alien'. Co-founder of the refugee organisation, the Austrian Centre, he continued a successful sculpting career in exile and was naturalised as a British subject in 1946.

Born: 1896 Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)

Died: 1967 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1935

Other name/s: Siegfried Joseph Charoux, Siegfried Buchta, Siegfried Charous, Siegfried Charroux, Siegfried Charoux RA


Biography

Sculptor Siegfried Joseph Charoux (née Siegfried Buchta) was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1896 to Josef Kinich, a civil engineer, and Anna Buchta (née Charous), a Czechoslovak dressmaker. He changed his name to Charous in 1914, later adopting ‘Charoux’ in 1926 — derived from ‘Chat Roux’ (French for ‘Red Cat’) — as a political statement. During the First World War, he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army until a hand injury led to his discharge in 1917, followed by restorative surgery. He studied under Josef Heu and attended the Vienna Academy under Hans Bitterlich (1922–24). Charoux then worked as a political cartoonist under the pseudonym ‘Chat Roux’. In 1926, he married international textile trader Margarethe Triebl.

Due to his strong left-wing political views, Charoux left Austria for England in September 1935, where he connected with Tate Gallery Director James Bolivar Manson, who sponsored his Home Office application to extend his stay. In 1939, he co-founded the fine arts section of the Austrian Centre (AC) with Oskar Kokoschka and other émigré artists and participated in the First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, organised by the Free German League of Culture at the Wertheim Gallery (1939). Interned as an enemy alien in Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man for two months in 1940, Charoux was released through the sponsorship of Lord David Astor, who also supported his successful citizenship application in 1946. During the war, Charoux gave BBC Austrian Service talks on political themes. He continued working as a sculptor in England, creating a memorial bust of Amy Johnson (1944), the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, presented at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull in 1945, as well as a commemorative stone for R. Gillespie at Guys Hospital and a bust of Lord Cecil at Chatham House (1946). He also exhibited in the AC's 1945 Exhibition of Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings & Sculptures at Foyle’s Gallery in London. Charoux’s style evolved in England, moving from his early admiration of Rodin to the simplicity and tranquility of Aristide Maillol. Art critic Mary Sorrell noted this shift, observing that Charoux’s wartime experiences brought serenity to his figures. Charoux himself described this as a move toward ‘peaceful and eternal’ art, embodying lasting values (Veasey 2024, p. 47). Experimenting with abstraction, he created works like the maquette Isaac Newton Memorial (c.1945), incorporating pierced forms and suspended elements inspired by Barbara Hepworth, and Equestrian (1946), a sleek equine figure.

In 1951, Charoux’s monumental concrete sculpture, The Islanders, featured prominently in the Festival of Britain on the Sea and Ships pavilion. Though destroyed after the Festival, it was celebrated as its most iconic and expensive sculpture (Burstow 2018, p. 41). Five years later, the London County Council (LCC) launched the Patronage of the Arts Scheme, funding public art through the Arts Council. Charoux and fellow émigré artists, including Georg Ehrlich and Uli Nimptsch, were frequent beneficiaries, contributing many works. Charoux’s best-known public sculpture, The Neighbours (1959), acquired through this scheme, was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts’s Summer Exhibition and still stands on the Highbury Quadrant Estate in Islington.

Between 1957 and 1964, Charoux worked on the Civilisation Cyclus, a series inspired by Roosevelt’s ‘four freedoms’: speech, worship, freedom from want, and fear (Veasey 2019, p. 125). The series, affirming Charoux’s commitment to civil liberties, included works such as Motor Cyclist (1957) for the Shell Building, Cellist (1958–59) for the Royal Festival Hall, and The Judge (1962) for the Royal Courts of Justice. According to Veasey, Charoux’s Civilisation Cyclus was realised amid vigorous debates on civilisation led by Keynes, Astor, Cripps, and Orwell, shaped by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which ‘augmented an international awareness of essential freedoms, some of which Charoux had been personally deprived of when he and his Jewish wife fled from Austria’ (Veasey 2019, p. 134).

In 1947, Charoux was elected to the Royal Society of British Sculptors (RBS, now Royal Society of Sculptors, RSS) and to the Royal Academy of Arts, as an Assoiciate (ARA) in 1949 and as an Academician (RA) in 1956, making him the first émigré sculptor of central or eastern European descent to hold either title since Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm and Sir Hubert von Herkomer. In 1948, he won the Vienna city prize for sculpture and became a professor in Austria in 1958, the same year his only solo exhibition, Youth and Music in Sculpture, was held at Piccadilly Gallery. The Manchester Guardian praised his work, noting he had long ‘mitigate[d] the pain’ in the Royal Academy's sculpture room (Laws 1958, p. 5). Charoux exhibited annually at the RA from 1940–74. He received Vienna’s Gold medal in 1966. Siegfried Charoux died in Hendon, England on 26 April 1967, with his remains interred in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. Posthumously, his work featured in Ben Uri's exhibition, Out of Austria (2018) and in Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art at the Royal West of England Academy (2019). His work is held in UK public collections, including Leeds Museum, Ulster Museum, and Ferens Art Gallery, with his archives at Austria’s Langenzersdorf Museum, which released an e-book of his sculptures in 2024, authored by Melanie Veasey.

Related books

  • Melanie Veasey, The Sculpture Journal, Vol. 28, Fasc. 1 (2019), pp. 123-138
  • Robert Burstow, 'Institutional Patronage of Central and Eastern European Émigré Sculptors in Britain, c1945–1965: Moderate Modernism for the Social-democratic Consensus', The British Art Journal, Vol. 19, No. 3, Winter 2018/2019, pp. 38-47
  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • Gregor-Anatol Bockstefl, Siegfried Charoux - Bildhauer und Maler (Langenzersdorf: Marktgemeinde Langenzersdorf, 2017)
  • Sarah MacDougall, 'Separate Spheres of Endeavour?’: Experiencing the Émigré Network in Britain, c.1933–1945', in B. Dogramaci and K. Wimmer eds. Des Exils: Künstlerische Verflechtungen Austausch und Patronage nach 1933 Conference (Munich: Gebr. Berlin: Mann Verlag, 2010), pp. 71-89
  • Jutta Vinzent, Identity and Image, Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945) (VDG Weimar, 2006), pp. 36–37, 47, 49, 58–59, 80–81, 254, 268, 282
  • Margaret Garlark, 'A Minor Language? Three Émigré Sculptors and theot Strategies of Assimilation' in Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet (eds.), Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945: Politics and Cultural Identity, The Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies 6 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005), pp. 167-200
  • Frederick Laws, 'Youth and Music in Sculpture: Mr Charoux's Exhibition', The Manchester Guardian, 14 August 1958, p. 5
  • Stephen Bone, 'An Exhibition of Christian Art', The Manchester Guardian, 12 May 12 1953, p. 5
  • 'Sculpture in the Park', The Manchester Guardian, 18 May 1948, p. 3 'Table Talk by Pendennis', The Observer 13 May 1951, p. 5

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Austrian Centre (founder member of the section of Fine Arts)
  • Free German League of Culture (FGLC) (member)
  • Royal Academy of Arts (ARA, RA)
  • Royal Society of British Sculptors (member)
  • Vienna Academy (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2019)
  • 'Out of Austria', Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2018)
  • Fine Tomorrow, group exhibition, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds (2003)
  • Out There, group exhibition, Somerset House, London (2003)
  • Contemporary British Sculpture, Arts Council Touring Exhibition (1961)
  • Modern British Portraits, Arts Council Exhibition (1960)
  • Open-Air Exhibition, Battersea Park, London (1960)
  • Youth and Music in Sculpture, solo exhibition, Piccadilly Gallery, London (1958)
  • Open-Air Exhibition, Holland Park, London (1957)
  • Open-Air Exhibition, Battersea Park, London (1954)
  • Sculpture in the Home, Arts Council Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries (1954)
  • Exhibition of Christian Art, Faculty of Arts, Park Lane, London (1953)
  • International Exhibition of Sculpture, Battersea Park, London (1951)
  • Festival of Britain, South Bank, London (1951)
  • Open-Air Exhibitions, Battersea Park, London (1951 and 1948)
  • Sculpture in the Home Exhibition, Mansard Gallery, Heal's, London (1945)
  • Exhibition of Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings & Sculptures, organised by the Austrian Centre, Foyles Gallery, London (1945)
  • AIA and FGLC Exhibition of Sculpture and Drawings, London (1941)
  • First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, organised by the FGLC, Wertheim Gallery, London (1939)
  Siegfried Charoux
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Siegfried Charoux]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Siegfried Charoux] in the Ben Uri Library