Arturo Di Modica, sculptor of Wall Street bull, dies at 80

Di Modica installed the bronze bull sculpture in New York's financial district without permission on the night of December 16, 1989.

Rome: Arturo Di Modica, the artist who sculpted ‘Charging Bull’, the bronze statue in New York which became an iconic symbol of Wall Street, has died in Sicily, aged 80.

The sculptor died at his home in Vittoria, the town said in a statement. The sculptor lived in New York for more than 40 years in New York. He arrived in 1973 and opened an art studio in the city’s SoHo neighbourhood. With the help of a truck and crane, Di Modica installed the bronze bull sculpture in New York’s financial district without permission on the night of December 16, 1989.

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The artist reportedly spent $350,000 of his money to create the 3.5-ton bronze beast that came to symbolise the resilience of the US economy after a 1987 stock market crash.

He said he conceived of the bull sculpture as a joke, a provocation. Instead, it became a cursedly serious thing, destined to be one of New York’s more visited monuments.

In the La Repubblica interview, Di Modica detailed how he, some 40 friends, a crane and a truck carried out a lightning-swift operation to plant the statue near Bowling Green park, a short stroll from the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange, without official authorisation.

“After a couple of scouting trips, I had discovered that at night, the police made its rounds on Wall Street every 7-8 minutes. When the sculptor and his friends arrived at the spot he’d picked, they were surprised to see a Christmas tree had been erected there. They deposited the bronze bull anyway, and, as the artist told it, uncorked a bottle of Champagne.

At the time of his death, he was working on prototypes for a twin horse sculpture he planned to make for the Sicilian town. It was envisioned as a 40-meter-high (132-foot-high) work to be erected on the banks of a river.