Arturo Di Modica, sculptor of Wall Street bull, dies at 80
ROME — The artist who sculpted “Charging Bull,” the bronze statue in New York that became an iconic symbol of Wall Street, has died in his hometown in Sicily at age 80.
Arturo Di Modica died at his home in Vittoria on Friday evening, the town said in a statement on Saturday. Di Modica had been ill for some time, it said.
The sculptor lived in New York for more than 40 years. He arrived in 1973 and opened an art studio in the city’s SoHo neighborhood. 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 Dec. 16, 1989.
The artist reportedly spent $350,000 of his own money to create the 3.5-ton bronze beast that came to symbolize the resilience of the U.S. economy after a 1987 stock market crash.
“It was a period of crisis. The New York Stock Exchange lost in one night more than 20%, and so many people were plunged into the blackest of depressions,” Rome daily La Repubblica quoted Di Modica as saying in an interview earlier this month.
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 interview, Di Modica detailed how he, about 40 friends, a crane and a truck carried out a lightning-swift operation to plant the statue.