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"Charging Bull": Originally the figure was illegally in front of the New York Stock Exchange
Photo: ZUMA Press / imago images
According to the news agencies Ansa and Adnkronos, he died at the age of 80 in the Italian province of Ragusa in Sicily: Arturo Di Modica, the creator of the famous Wall Street bull in New York, is dead. According to the newspaper "La Repubblica", he fought the artist for many years against cancer.
On Monday he is to be buried in the city of Vittoria, as Ansa wrote.
Sicily regional president Nello Musumeci wrote on Facebook that he was moved when he learned of Di Modica's death.
Even though he lived in the USA for a long time, Di Modica was always inextricably linked with Sicily, it said.
Di Modica had lived in the United States for more than 40 years.
His most famous work is the Wall Street Bull or Charging Bull in Manhattan's financial district near the New York Stock Exchange.
The bronze sculpture - weighing three tons, five meters long - shows a grim bull and is popular with many tourists.
Di Modica wanted to symbolize the image of the growing stock market;
He recently told the Repubblica in an interview.
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Artist Di Modica: "My bull is a sign of optimism and strength."
Photo: Craig Ruttle / dpa
In 2017 there was a dispute about the sculpture: At that time, on International Women's Day, the statue »Fearless Girl« by the artist Kristen Visbal was unveiled across from the bull. It was intended to point out the lack of female executives in US companies and resolutely defied the animal.
At the time, Di Modica protested against the fact that his bull was imputed to a patriarchal gesture: he said of the »Repubblica«: »My bull is a sign of optimism and strength.
I do not agree to see how it is transformed into a negative symbol. «His statue was made to represent male dominance over women.
Later the "Fearless Girl" had to move to another place in front of the stock exchange.
In December 1989, Di Modica and 40 others illegally erected his sculpture weighing several tons on the stock exchange in a night and fog action.
The stock exchange bosses didn't like that and they had them removed.
In the end it ended up at Park Bowling Green, where it still stands today.
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eth / dpa