Élisabeth Daynès

Élisabeth Daynès
Élisabeth Daynès
Born	1960; Béziers, France
Education	autodidact
Known for	Sculpture, Plastic arts
Awards	John J. Lazendorf Paleoart prize

Élisabeth Daynès (Béziers, 1960-) is a French sculptor notable for her anthropological work relating to early humans.^[1]

By 1981, she was working with the Théâtre de la Salamandre in Lille, creating masks for the theatre. In 1984, she founded her own studio, Atelier Daynès, in Paris. Some years later, the museum at Le Parc du Thot, close to the Lascaux caves, asked her to sculpt a life-sized woolly mammoth with a group of humans from the Magdalenian epoch. She has since specialized in reconstructing hominids from remaining bones. Her work is present in museums all over the world, including the Musée des Merveilles in Tende, Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, Sangiran Museum in Indonesia, Naturhistoriska riksmuseet in Stockholm,^[2]^[3] and Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos (Spain).^[4] One Daynès sculpture at the Field Museum depicts Homo ergaster, a pre-Neanderthal hominid that lived about 1.6 million years ago.^[5] One of her most notable sculptures is at the Krapina Neanderthal Museum in northern Croatia, where she made a reconstruction of an entire seventeen-member Neanderthal family.^[6]

In 2005, she created a lifelike model of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in a project with National Geographic. A close resemblance to the Pharaoh is likely, even though physical features like ears, nose tip, and colors of skin and eyes cannot be reliably reconstructed.^[7]

Award

In 2010 Daynès won the John J. Lazendorf Paleoart prize, widely regarded as the most prestigious award given to artists in science art related to paleontology, in the category of Three-Dimensional Art.^[8]

References

^ Michel Brunet D'Abel à Toumaï: Nomade, chercheur d'os 2006 p239 - "Avec Élisabeth Daynès, sculpteur français d'hominidés fossiles, nous avons entrepris la reconstruction de la tête de Tournai. Très experte dans ces exercices, on lui doit entre autres Lucy et Lucien "
^ Atelier Daynes' internet site
^ Information leaflet from Naturhistorska riksmuseet
^ De Jorge, Judith (May 2014). "La mujer que puso cara a los primeros hombres" [The woman who put a face...]. ABC (in Spanish). Retrieved 8 October 2021.
^ Golembiewski, Kate (20 June 2017). "Bringing Neanderthals to Life: Sculptures of Elisabeth Daynès". Field Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
^ Muzej krapinskih neandertalaca
^ The Fresh Face of King Tut. Science Daily
^ "Elisabeth Daynes wins Lazendorf" (Press release). Retrieved 8 October 2021.