Johnny Depp makes his Italian debut as an artist. Starting Nov. 6, two new works by the U.S. actor and musician, Study I and Study II, from the series Yesterday’s Flowers, will be presented in the Milan spaces of Deodato Arte. The works, limited editions, are part of a production distinguished by an intimate visual language built around the theme of time and the relationship between fragility and permanence. The two prints on Somerset Photo Rag 300 gsm paper, made with a Giclée Print technique and two silkscreen varnishes, belong to a limited edition of 85 copies (size 60x75 cm, signed by the artist) and are offered at a price of 3,515.00 euros each. In them, Depp abandons any illustrative intent to construct a reflection on the passage of time and the possibility of beauty to resist the wear and tear of time. The flowers depicted, varied in color and form, emerge from cracked surfaces, as if sprouting from the cracks of matter, in a link between light, memory and rebirth.
“These works reveal an authentic Johnny Depp, free from any role,” emphasizes Deodato Salafia, CEO of Deodato Arte Gallery. "With Yesterday’s Flowers, he shows the most intimate side of his gaze, one that looks at the world with depth, passionate melancholy and wonder. It is a story of fragility that speaks of strength."
In the second study, flowers seem to emerge against a background that recalls the colors of the sky, oscillating between periwinkle tones and ochre hues. There is no nostalgia in the canonical sense, but a meditation on continuity: the flowers do not disappear, they mutate. They remain recognizable while transforming, as happens to memories and feelings that resist the erosion of time. Still lifes, from the seventeenth century to Monet’s meditative gardens, have represented much more than a technical exercise for artists: the genre has been a way to reflect on transience and memory.
Depp therefore fits into this tradition by reinterpreting it in a contemporary key, with a language that juxtaposes abstraction and figuration. His compositions pay homage to resilience. Cracks, far from being symbols of disintegration, become spaces from which life continues to flourish. In Yesterday’s Flowers, one senses a reference to matter and time, elements that have always defined Italian artistic history: ancient walls, faded frescoes, worn but still vibrant surfaces. Depp seems to observe that same beauty resisting wear and tear, turning it into a universal metaphor. Each chromatic variation evokes a mood, a passage of seasons, a fragment of life.
The artist avoids one-size-fits-all interpretations: flowers may represent for some a family memory, for others an affection or a fragment of identity. In a context dominated by speed and overexposure, Yesterday’s Flowers invites pause, contemplation of what remains stable in an ever-changing world.
Johnny Depp is no stranger to visual art. From a young age he has cultivated a passion for drawing and painting, activities that he has always accompanied in parallel with his film and music career. During the years of major Hollywood success, media interest focused on music, but painting remained a constant, private practice, practiced in studios away from the spotlight. The first public opening of this side of his work was in 2022, when he presented the Friends & Heroes series, dedicated to portraits of friends and figures dear to him. The works, characterized by an energetic stroke and a neo-expressionist approach, attracted great attention in the United States, convincing even a section of critics usually wary of outsiders in the art system.
In 2023, the exhibition A Bunch of Stuff, mounted in the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Manhattan, solidified his presence in the contemporary art scene, offering a glimpse into his creative process. With Yesterday’s Flowers, Depp continues the search, moving toward a more meditative language, less narrative and more focused on the relationship between time, memory and imperfect beauty. The project thus sits between painting and introspection. The exhibition at Deodato Arte thus represents the Italian public’s first direct contact with Johnny Depp’s visual work. The actor, known for his versatility and a film career studded with iconic roles, appears here in a different, quieter dimension, in which the image does not tell but evokes. Yesterday ’s Flowers is a visual reflection that is part of the long dialogue between art and memory, inviting the viewer to recognize, in yesterday’s flowers, the persistence of his own emotions.
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| Johnny Depp makes his debut as an artist: two silkscreens on display at Deodato Arte in Milan |
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