Farewell to Arturo di Modica, the sculptor who made the Wall Street bull

Sculptor Arturo Di Modica, best known for creating the sculpture that has been installed in front of the New York Stock Exchange since 1989, the New York Stock Exchange, passed away Friday in Vittoria, Ragusa province: it is Charging Bull, known in Italy as “the Wall Street bull.” The sculptor had been ill for some time.

Born Jan. 26, 1941, in Vittoria, Di Modica had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and it was also in the Tuscan capital that he opened his first art studio, producing works in Carrara marble (also collaborating with a workshop in the city of marble) and bronze. His career began in the sign of Henry Moore, who was his teacher: Di Modica’s early works are very much influenced by Moore’s style. In 1973 he moved to the United States, settling in New York: as mentioned, his most famous work of art is from 1989, and its birth is very curious, because Charging Bull was made entirely at the artist’s expense (it cost him $360,000) and was installed in front of the New York Stock Exchange without any authorization, triggering the wrath of the stock exchange’s management. The work, weighing about 3.2 tons, was then first removed (the day after it was installed-Di Modica unloaded it at night, on December 15 of that year, in front of the stock exchange’s headquarters) and then, because New Yorkers liked it, it was moved to the Bowling Green triangle, a green area at the end of Broadway, a couple of blocks away from the stock exchange: that is where it still stands and where it is admired and photographed by thousands, having since become one of the city’s most recognizable symbols.

The work, in Di Modica’s intentions, was meant to be a symbol of the strength of the economy, to be read positively, as the stock exchange’s ability to rise again after collapses: thus, when the statue, also made of bronze, of a little girl gazing defiantly at the bull was installed right in front of Charging Bull in 2017, Di Modica asked and obtained that it be removed, because the addition changed the meaning of the sculpture in the opposite direction.

As part of his career, the Sicilian sculptor worked mainly for private clients, without participating in any particular major exhibitions. For some years Di Modica had returned to Italy, where he was working on a work called I Cavalli dell’Ippari, a 27-meter-high bronze statue to be installed posthumously in the Ippari valley near Vittoria.

Pictured: the Charging Bull. Ph. Credit Andrew Henkelman

Farewell to Arturo di Modica, the sculptor who made the Wall Street bull

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