Arturo Di Modica, artist who sculpted Wall Street bull, dead at 80

Arturo Di Modica, the artist who sculpted the famed “Charging Bull” statue that has become a symbol of Wall Street, has died. He was 80.

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Di Modica died Friday in his hometown in Sicily. He had lived 40 years in New York. He opened an art studio in 1973 when he first arrived.

Di Modica used a truck and crane to install the 3.5-ton bronze beast in New York’s financial district without permission in 1989.

“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,” Di Monica told La Republica earlier this month.

He spent $350,000 of his own money to create the statue. He first thought of the creation as “a joke, a provocation. Instead it became a cursedly serious thing.”

It has become one of the city’s more visited monuments.

At the time of his death he was working on a twin horse sculpture prototype for the town of Vittoria, Sicily. The completed statue was planned to be 132-feet high and would have been placed on the banks of a river.

Di Modica’s funeral will be held Monday in the town’s St. John the Baptist Church. The town also declared Monday an official day of mourning.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cox Media Group