Daria Schmitt

Daria Schmitt

Born in 1973 - France

Topics :
  • Adventure
  • Fantasy
  • Science fiction
43 available pages
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The Art of Black and White

After studying history and then architecture, Daria Schmitt worked for various companies in the performing arts industry, designing sets, creating storyboards, and producing visual materials for events. She taught for several years at a school of applied arts before helping launch an architecture and museography agency. At the same time, she began creating comic art and published her first project with Casterman. She has produced four graphic novels with this publisher. The latest, Ornithomaniacs, in black and white, received the Artémisia Prize in the Drawing category in 2018. In 2022, Le Bestiaire du crépuscule (The Twilight Bestiary), a graphic novel with extraordinary artwork paying homage to H. P. Lovecraft and fantasy literature, was published under the Aire Libre imprint by Dupuis. For the same publisher, she released La Tête de mort venue de Suède (The Skull from Sweden) in 2025, the incredible story of Descartes’ skull. 

What stands out when you look at Daria Schmitt’s illustrations is that you can tell she had fun working on her subject: it’s a reflection on science, on life, and on death as well. “The whole book is a vanitas!” she says. A vanitas is an allegorical artistic representation that highlights the fragility of human beings in the face of death and the futility of their attachment to worldly values. Daria Schmitt’s artwork, like that of her prestigious predecessors, aims to show precisely how art transcends human life and, as Malraux put it in Les Voix du silence (The Voices of Silence), "snatches the song of the constellations from the nebulae.” 

Didier Pasamonik on The Skull from Sweden – Actua BD

Credits :

Schmitt © Dupuis, 2026 (banner) © Romuald Meigneux (portrait)

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