ROME – The artist who sculpted “Charging Bull”, the bronze statue of New York that has become an iconic symbol of Wall Street, died in his hometown in Sicily at the age of 80.
Arturo Di Modica died at his home in Vittoria on Friday night, the city said in a statement on Saturday. Di Modica had been ill for some time, he said.
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 neighborhood. With the help of a truck and a crane, Di Modica installed the bronze sculpture of the bull in New York’s financial district without permission on the night of December 16, 1989.
The artist reportedly spent $ 350,000 of his money to create the 3.5-ton bronze beast that came to symbolize the resilience of the United States economy after the stock market crash in 1987.
“It was a period of crisis. The New York Stock Exchange lost more than 20 percent in one night, and many people plunged into the darkest of depressions, ”Di Modica told the Roman newspaper La Repubblica in an interview earlier this month.
He said he conceived the bull sculpture as “a joke, a provocation. Instead, it became a damn serious thing, ”destined to be one of New York’s most visited monuments.
In the La Repubblica interview, Di Modica detailed how he, about 40 friends, a crane and truck carried out an extremely quick operation to plant the statue near Bowling Green Park, a short walk from the New York Stock Exchange headquarters , without official authorization.
“Five minutes. Operations shouldn’t have lasted any longer. Otherwise, we would have risked a lot,” he recalled. “After a few reconnaissance trips, I found that, at night, the police made their rounds on Wall Street every 7 to 8 minutes. “
When the sculptor and his friends arrived at the chosen location, they were surprised to see that a Christmas tree had been erected there. They deposited the bronze bull anyway and, as the artist said, opened a bottle of champagne.
Di Modica left Vittoria, Sicily, at the age of 19, and went to Florence, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts.
At the time of his death, he was working on prototypes for a sculpture of two horses that he planned to make for the Sicilian city. It was conceived as a 60-meter-high project to be built on the banks of a river.
The city declared Monday, when Di Modica’s funeral will be held at the Church of St. John the Baptist in Vittoria, as an official day of mourning.