(b Lemberg, Austria [now Lviv, Ukraine], 12 May 1886; d Zurich, 20 June 1946). Swiss painter. He attended secondary school in Russia, and from 1905 to 1907 he studied philosophy at Jagiellonian University, Kraków, as well as studying under the history painter Florent Cynk (1838–1912) and the portrait painter Theodor Axentowicz (1859–1938) at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1908 he attended both the private school in Munich run by Simon Hollósy, and the summer school at Nagybánya (now in Romania); it was there that he met the artist Ilona Spiegelhalter (1889–1971), whom he married. Tscharner attended Matisse’s school in Paris, probably from 1909 to 1910, but no work from this period survives. He left Russia in 1914 and by 1916 had settled permanently in Zurich. From 1914 to 1917 Tscharner’s style was clearly inspired by the French Cubists. He took part in, among other things, the Dada exhibition at the Dada Galerie, Zurich (1917). While continuing to show Cubist influence, from 1917 he adopted muted colours and a more academic manner evocative of Jean-Siméon Chardin, principally in the choice of such subjects as lemons, pitchers and books, which concentrated his attention on form and colour. His work c. 1925 strongly evoked that of Derain, Braque, and especially that of Giorgio Morandi. He tended towards intimism, depicting subjects as denuded geometrical forms in sombre tones (e.g. Still-life with Guitar, c. 1930; Basle, Schweiz. N.-Versich.-Ges. Kol.), and this cocoon-like atmosphere was the dominant characteristic of his work. Between 1930 and 1940 he executed most of his portraits and he increasingly painted landscapes, often depicting lakes in stormy weather; some of these works, particularly those depicting the Rhône near Geneva, have been compared with Corot’s paintings.