Introducing Johnny Depp's First Sculpture, A Childhood Dream Made in Bronze

The world fell in love with Johnny Depp, not just because of the wild roles he has portrayed on screen, but also because of who he is off it. There seems to be no forced off-screen performance, or carefully constructed image, no matter what the world has thrown at him. What you see is what you get, people love this authenticity, and his art is no different. If anything, it is where that honesty has lived most completely.

The Pirates of The Caribbean star has dabbled in art for years, and his first foray into the world of commercial art came in 2022, when he raised USD 3.8 million in just a few hours, selling prints from his debut collection. 

And now he presents The Bunnyman. Apart from being his first sculpture, what makes it even more interesting is its backstory. It comes from a recurring childhood dream - a faceless figure that lived in Depp's private imagination for decades, and a drawing his son Jack made at age five, "beautiful scribbles," as Depp describes them, which reminded him of this dream. All of it now stands two metres tall in white bronze, for the world to view. Half-human, half-rabbit, carrying what Depp calls a "sword of truth", The Bunnyman has appeared across his sketches, paintings and prints ever since, including in the limited-edition series Friends & Heroes and Bunnyman Genesis.

 

The Sigg Art Foundation unveils The Bunnyman (2026) at the 21st edition of Contemporary Istanbul, presented outdoors at Tersane Istanbul, the historic Ottoman shipyard on the Golden Horn, as one of the fair's most anticipated special projects. Cast in white bronze, it stands at Milan's Fonderia Artistica Battaglia using the lost-wax method, the same ancient process associated with Alberto Giacometti and Marino Marini.

"When people see the painting I did - The Bunnyman, they always ask the same question: where did it come from?" Depp says. "Some character that Jack had scribbled, beautiful scribbles into that shape, that image, reminded me of a kind of recurrent dream that I had as a child, probably around Jack's age, five, six..."

The sculpture gives three-dimensional form to this figure for the first time, translating an image developed through years of painting and collage on Rizla paper against a bold red ground into something permanent and monumental. Even the casting process carries personal resonance: the sand used in the lost-wax method echoes the moving grains Depp recalls within the figure's body in his dream. Every detail, in other words, is thoughtfully translated into art.

The collaboration began with a meeting between Depp and Pierre Sigg, founder of the Sigg Art Foundation, in AlUla, Saudi Arabia. That encounter in the heart of the Arab world set in motion a project that is now being unveiled at one of the most rapidly ascendant art fairs in the world. "Contemporary Istanbul now draws international artists and galleries who would not have considered it a decade ago," says Sigg. "This year we are presenting Johnny Depp's first sculpture. That an artist of his standing chose Istanbul tells you where the fair sits today. Contemporary Istanbul has earned its place."

The Istanbul presentation is one half of a simultaneous global moment. The Bunnyman also features in A Bunch of Stuff, Depp's major exhibition at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, a sprawling survey of more than 200 works that opened in August 2026. From Istanbul to Shanghai, The Bunnyman is truly making its mark, and so is Johnny Depp's arrival as a visual artist of genuine standing, using his childhood dream, his son's scribble, a sword of truth, and two metres of white bronze standing on the banks of the Golden Horn. Art has always been about where the personal and the universal meet, and The Bunnyman takes us right there.

The Bunnyman by Johnny Depp is presented at Contemporary Istanbul, Tersane Istanbul, 22–27 September 2026.

www.siggartfoundation.com