Artist: Sid Maurer
Title: Johnny Depp (from the Portraits of Luminaries Collection)
Year created: 2010
Medium: Original Mixed Media Artwork on Wood Board
Edition: Original Unique Artwork, Hand-Signed by the Artist
Height (inches): 27
Width (inches): 20
Signed twice by the artist
Signed Area: front & back
Also Titled and Dated on back
This piece is unframed.
Description of piece:
Sid Maurer’s mastery as a fine artist is evident in his strikingly accurate, personal and intuitive portraits of luminaries.
Imbued with warmth and vibrancy, Maurer’s portraits capture the essence of his subjects, and synthesize Maurer’s artistic vision with his technical and compositional roots in graphic design. Bold, visible paint texturing and layering bring added light, depth and dimensionality to the artwork.
An original mixed media painting on wood board, Maurer’s self-titled Johnny Depp is one of the largest portraits in Maurer's Portraits of Luminaries Collection, measuring 27” in height x 20” width. In this searing portrait, Depp looks intensely at the viewer. Maurer’s mastery of light and shadow interplay, directing our attention to the depth of Depp’s gaze, while capturing the character and intensity of his subject.
The artwork is signed twice by the artist: first, on the front of the artwork, lower right, prominently in black; and on the reverse, where Maurer has also titled and dated the work.
Johnny Depp is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity, which comes in a clear, protective archival sleeve.
JOHNNY DEPP is an actor, producer, and musician. He has been nominated for ten Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Actor for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Actor, among other accolades.
Depp made his debut in the horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), before rising to prominence as a teen idol on the television series 21 Jump Street (1987–1990). In the 1990s, Depp acted both in independent and Hollywood films, many of which which have risen to cult status, including What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Benny and Joon (1993), Dead Man (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), along with his collaborations with director Tim Burton, starring in Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood (1994) and Sleepy Hollow (1999).
In the 2000s, Depp became one of the most commercially successful film stars by playing Jack Sparrow in the swashbuckler film series Pirates of the Caribbean (2003–present). He received critical praise for Finding Neverland (2004), and continued his commercially successful collaboration with Tim Burton with the films Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Corpse Bride (2005), Sweeney Todd (2007), and Alice in Wonderland (2010). He also reprised the role of Barnabas Collins in Burton’s 1970s-set Dark Shadows.
In 2012, Depp was recorded as one of the world's most successful film stars, and was listed by the Guinness World Records as the world's highest-paid actor. During the 2010s decade, Depp began producing films through his company, Infinitum Nihil, and formed the rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry.
Artist bio:
Sid Maurer's (1926-2017) long career spanned decades in the world of Art and Music, beginning at age seventeen when he was hired as Assistant Art Director at Columbia Records in New York City. When the music industry exploded, Maurer designed album covers and promotional material for popular artists, alongside Columbia Records colleague Andy Warhol. Maurer expanded his commercial art studio to tackle a wide range of projects for the music and film industries, while his striking artistic style developed, influenced by artists he met including Pollack and Rauschenberg.
Maurer left the empire of music and art that he had helped to build to focus on his passion: painting. In the last decade, his work has been shown in a wide variety of venues, including the Georgia Capitol, the Carnegie Museum and U.C.L.A. His commissioned artwork includes work for ESPN, MotorSport America Magazine, David Bowie, Boy George, and Donovan.
As a painter, Maurer created large mixed media pieces that were very much a product of his varied training and experience. His style combined bold, dynamic colors and strokes with painstaking layouts and typographical elements. The result is the unique blend of a painter's passion tempered with the calculating compositional eye of a graphic designer, exploring his themes through the use of bold subject matter, symbols and graphics.