Sylvia Daoust

Sylvia Daoust, CM, CQ RCA (May 24, 1902 – July 19, 2004)

She won many notable prizes for her work, which has been exhibited in institutions in the United States, Italy, and Canada. She is known for her portrait sculptures, and for revitalizing the traditions of liturgical art.

In 1915, she began studying at the Conseil des arts et manufactures with Joseph Franchère, Joseph Saint-Charles and John Young Johnstone. In 1923, Daoust enrolled in the École des beaux arts, which had just recently opened. the first-place prize in an inter-provincial competition for sculpture and in the same year received a scholarship to study in France from the province of Québec She returned home in 1930, teaching drawing, anatomy, modeling, and sculpting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Québec City until 1943.

Work

The majority of Daoust's works are religious in content and form. They have been described as a combination of the formal characteristics of modernism with the austerity of sculpture of the Middle Ages.

While she did extensive work in the classroom, 1948 marked the beginning her career in modernist art alongside fellow artist and peer, Paul-Émile Borduas. During the early 1940s movement of sacred art, and the National Gallery of Canada, among others.

Her public sculptures include the bronze of Nicolas Viel adorning the façade of the Quebec Legislature (National Assembly), Mary Queen of the World at Montreal's Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral and a statue of Édouard Montpetit at the Université de Montréal.

In 1942, she won the first prize for Our Lady of Montreal, in the competition held on the occasion of the Third Centenary of the Founding Nationale de St. Jean Baptiste. Royal Society of Canada Order of Canada, 1976