Daniel Elias Kaufmann was born in Switzerland, to a Swiss father and a Lebanese-Egyptian mother. A physician-scientist and sculptor, he currently lives in Montreal after having spent several years in Boston.
Daniel Kaufmann trained in classical sculpture techniques in Lausanne with the Hungarian sculptor and painter Andréas Dobay. While in the United States, he studied bronze and aluminum casting with David Phillips and direct metal work on steel with Reid Drum at the MassArt School in Boston. He subsequently learned numerous techniques of stone carving at the Carving Studio in Vermont, with Nora Valdez, Gary Smith, Frank Anjo and Rick Rothrock. He currently works mostly on marble and granite. While Daniel Kaufmann's recent sculptures are abstract, they frequently evoke figurative elements, such as birds, wings, sails or the human body. The slender shapes in stone often push the material close to its limits, and suggest connections between mineral and spiritual worlds.
This website mostly presents his work over the past four years. One webpage, entitled "Over The Years", reflects on the drifting identity of being and on returning themes dear to the artist.