After his marriage to Margarethe Treibl in 1926, Siegfried Buchta adopted the stage name Charoux (his code name as a cartoonist was CHAT ROUX). During the First World War he made his first sculptural attempts and became acquainted with the painters Robin Christian Andersen, Eugen Sturm-Skrla and Johann Kodanich, and later with Gustav Schütt and Broncia Koller-Pinell. After briefly attending drama school, Charoux turned entirely to sculpture in 1919 and began studying privately with Josef Heu; 1922 – 1924 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Hans Bitterlich. 1923 – 1928 Charoux worked as a political cartoonist for the Arbeiter-Zeitung and other left-wing and left-liberal papers. From 1926 to 1938, Charoux ran his own studio in Vienna. He made his debut at the 1927 art show with a design for a Robert Blum monument that has not survived. As a result, other political sculptures were created, parallel to works with a calmer formal language. In 1935, Charoux's monument to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was unveiled at Vienna's Judenplatz - a competition that Charoux won against 82 competitors. The monument was melted down after the "Anschluss". In 1935, Charoux emigrated to London. In 1940, he was interned on the Isle of Man. A British citizen since 1946, he became an Associate of the Royal Academy (A.R.A.) in 1949 and a full member (R.A.) in 1956. He was a lecturer at the Royal Academy Sculpture School and received numerous public commissions in Great Britain and Austria. Charoux was again commissioned to recreate the Lessing monument, which was only unveiled at Vienna's Morzinplatz after his death in 1968 and has been at Judenplatz again since 1981. In Charoux's painting work, watercolours and opaque paintings dominate in the early and middle creative periods. Towards the end of the 1950s, he increasingly experimented with acrylic. Favourite themes are still lifes, landscapes (especially Cornwall, Gastein), music and studies of his plastic work. Figure studies and monument designs predominate in his extensive graphic work.