David Daoud (1970) – Couple – Bronze, Contemporary Sculpture

A significant bronze sculpture by David Daoud, a Franco-Lebanese painter, draftsman, and sculptor born in 1970, depicting two figures united in a particularly expressive vertical composition.

The two figures seem to emerge directly from the material. The bodies are never fully defined: they draw closer together, almost merging in places, while the bronze is worked into hollows, reliefs, and fissures. The deliberately uneven surface strongly catches the light and gives the work a presence that shifts depending on the viewer’s perspective.

The couple—a recurring theme in Daoud’s work—is treated here less as a portrait than as an evocation of a bond. The faces remain barely sketched, and the silhouettes seem timeless. This economy of detail leaves ample room for emotion, intimacy, and the silent dialogue between the two figures.

The sculpture is particularly interesting when viewed in profile: despite its height of 56 cm, it displays a surprising delicacy, almost as if Daoud had transposed a drawn or painted figure into bronze. The voids carved into the material are an integral part of the composition and allow light to pass through it.

Born in Lebanon in 1970, David Daoud now lives and works in the Vexin region. His childhood, marked by the Lebanese Civil War, upheavals, and exile, has been a lasting source of inspiration for a body of work in which the themes of travel, absence, memory, solitude, and the quest for a redeeming light recur.

After studying at the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs in Paris, he worked with the sculptor Charles Auffret. This encounter was pivotal in his artistic journey. Auffret himself belongs to the tradition of French sculpture stemming from the studio of Auguste Rodin’s disciples. There, Daoud acquired not only an understanding of the model and volume but, above all, a deeply physical relationship with the material—a quality fully evident in this bronze.

A painter known first and foremost for his large compositions filled with figures, Daoud is also an accomplished draftsman and sculptor. In his bronzes, as in his paintings, the human figure is never merely descriptive: it appears, fades, and dissolves into the material. His work thus retains a deliberately archaic and timeless quality, nourished in particular by his interest in nature and cave art.

His work now enjoys institutional and international recognition. David Daoud exhibits in France, Belgium, Lebanon, and abroad. Several of his works have been added to the permanent collection of the Arab World Institute in Paris; his work is also featured in various public and private collections. In 2011, he received the Frédéric de Carfort Prize from the Fondation de France. The musician Ibrahim Maalouf also chose one of his paintings to illustrate his album “Levantine Symphony No. 1.”

This sculpture is thus a fine example of the sculptural dimension of Daoud’s work: a deeply materialistic piece, in which the bronze seems less shaped to depict bodies than to reveal their presence.