Arturo Di Modica: Biography

c.1976: Arturo Di Modica & Early Abstracts, NYC

©Arturo Di Modica

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Late in 2012 I flew to Sicily to meet Arturo Di Modica, then 71 years old, to discuss acting as his first official art dealer. Looking through the airport crowds, it was impossible to miss the thick trademark beard of the man waiting to greet me. Like millions worldwide, I knew his iconic Charging Bull, but its creator was a mystery. Over time I came to realise that the sculpture was in fact an embodiment of Di Modica himself. Filled with strength and power, both leave you unsure in which direction they will charge next. And it is this unpredictability that characterised the way he premiered his masterpiece to the world.

At the dead of night on the 14th December 1989, Di Modica and a crew of friends arrived on Wall Street with the four-ton Charging Bull on the back of a flatbed truck. Having spent the last few nights monitoring the security patrols, he knew the guard would return in just four and half minutes. To his surprise, a gigantic Christmas tree had appeared since his last visit, right where he planned to set down all 16ft of bronze. Without a second to spare Di Modica announced, “Drop the bull under the tree – it’s my gift.”
1941: Born Into Axis Occupied Sicily
Young Arturo Di Modica circa 1960

©Arturo Di Modica

1960: Ran Away to Florence

Born in small-town Sicily in 1941 as the Second World War raged and just before the Allies invaded his native island, from childhood Di Modica was conditioned to fight. He grew up surrounded by the remains of the ancient Greek and Roman empires, alerting him to the immense possibilities of human ambition. His fascination became so great that he began skipping class to dig for ancient artefacts, already showing signs of refusing to play by the rules. Aged just 18, he secretly boarded a steam train destined for Florence to pursue life as an artist. Unable to afford the local foundries, he resorted to forging his own tools, salvaging materials and casting his bronzes in his home-built foundry. These early efforts were rewarded with a solo exhibition at the prestigious Villa Medici in 1968.
1970: Moved to New York

"With my sculptures and nude paintings I had already bothered the artistic environment of Florence. I was too eccentric for that time, so much that my teachers suggested me to go to America"

Arturo Di Modica

Di Modica’s next big move came in 1970 - to New York City, capital of the world’s art market. Hitting the ground running, he quickly set up a studio on Grande Street. Monumental modernistic marbles soon began appearing on the sidewalk, in a prelude of things to come. When Hilton Kramer, the famous art critic, slammed down the phone on Di Modica’s invitation to his 1977 Battery Park exhibition, the artist’s Sicilian blood began to boil. Determined to make a point, he loaded eight monumental abstract marbles from the show onto a truck and turned up on Fifth Avenue. After dropping the works outside the Rockefeller Center, his driver made a speedy getaway, narrowly avoiding four police officers who came running, guns out. Confronted and unable to speak much English, Di Modica pushed a gun aside and handed over a flyer. The next day, his exploits covered the front page of the New York Post. A valuable lesson had been learnt with the attention acting as a catalyst to his career.

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1977: Rockefeller Center Drop
c.1980: 54 Crosby St Construction
1988: Il Cavallo, Lincoln Center
c. 1988: Charging Bull model, 54 Crosby Street

©Arturo Di Modica

1987-89: Charging Bull

Ten years later, on the 19th October 1987, Black Monday struck the US stock markets. By then, Di Modica had a following of important collectors and was working from a four-level SoHo studio he had constructed by hand. He felt indebted to America and, as hard times bit after the crash, a need to act welled up inside him. A lightning bolt moment sent him into the studio where he began the tireless work. Two years and $350,000 later, Charging Bull emerged. So when he arrived on Wall Street to find a Christmas tree had appeared, it was fate. Charging Bull was Di Modica’s gift to America, intended to inspire each person who came into contact with it, to carry on fighting with ‘strength and determination’ through the hard times for their dreams.
Monumental Visions

Arturo Di Modica cultivated mystery as instinctively as he shaped bronze. He was guarded not only about his past, but about his present — and especially about what he was planning next. Around the time of the Charging Bull installation, John Gotti, then head of the Gambino crime family, reportedly walked into Di Modica’s Crosby Street studio, curious to meet “the crazy Sicilian” he had heard was operating in the neighbourhood. At the time, Di Modica had been troubled by local mafia associates, and when Gotti appeared, the artist erupted: “Why are these guys bothering me? I’m a Sicilian artist!” He never elaborated further. But the harassment stopped.

Di Modica was similarly elusive when pressed for personal history. On one occasion, when asked to reveal more for publication, he snapped, “You’ve got more than I’ve ever told anyone. I never did this. You’ve got everything.” After a pause, he smiled. “Well not everything, but the rest I am taking with me.”
"I met Di Modica when he was 71 and fighting cancer. If he got knocked down he always got back up. Not only did he get back up but his projects and ambitions became bigger than ever"

Jacob Harmer

Following the success of Charging Bull, Di Modica was flooded with offers of gallery representation and attention from elite collectors. He declined most of it. Instead, he continued to work independently from Crosby Street, dealing directly with collectors and personally supervising every cast at his foundries. “I never wanted the personal attention,” he once said. “Even when they offered for my name to go on a plaque by Charging Bull I didn’t want it. I wanted people to love my art for my art and not because of me.”

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Crosby Street remained the axis of his world — a place of work, gathering, and spectacle. He hosted exhibitions and legendary parties there, including the infamous Sex on the Beach show, for which he transformed the space into a fabricated shoreline, unveiling semi-abstract sculptures alongside live models recreating their poses.

By the 1990s, Di Modica had become a fixture at Cipriani Downtown, where he met collectors daily and installed sculptures both inside and out. His relationship with Giuseppe Cipriani led to further commissions, including the design of Cipriani’s Wall Street location.

Religious and cosmic symbolism threaded through his work. Asked whether he was religious, Di Modica replied that he believed in the universe. In 1997, he created a 14-foot Menorah for the Jewish community, installing it at Bowling Green for Hanukkah. The sculpture later vanished in storage, presumed stolen, only to resurface mysteriously at a Long Island auction house in 2019, triggering a police investigation. Where it had been for twenty-two years remains unknown.

By decade’s end, Charging Bull was inseparable from New York’s identity. In 1999, Di Modica received the Ellis Island Medal of Honour, joining a lineage that included Muhammad Ali, Martin Scorsese, and seven U.S. presidents. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, images of the Bull — dust-covered yet defiant — took on renewed resonance, its message of endurance suddenly universal.

In the early 2000s, Di Modica entered negotiations with an influential private collector over the original Charging Bull. A sale was agreed only on the condition that the sculpture remain at Bowling Green. The collector then commissioned the remaining casts in the edition, a windfall that enabled Di Modica to embark on two vast undertakings: the School of the New Renaissance in Vittoria, and Wild Horses, envisioned as the largest equine sculpture ever created.

Soon after, the City of Shanghai approached Di Modica to commission a monumental bull for the Bund. The opportunity arrived alongside a far graver challenge — cancer. Still, he insisted on artistic autonomy. “I am the artist. I must be free to make the work in my own way, in my own style.” Asked whether he would exceed the scale of the New York Bull, he declined. “I have no interest in stoking municipal rivalries.” Even at his most monumental, Di Modica remained singularly his own.
2021: Final Years & Passing

In 2018 Di Modica vowed he would die working. Whether he unerestimated the scale of the Wild Horses and School of the New Renaissance projects is unknown, but he was working right until the very end. By 2020, he finished the first Wild Horses sculpture. He admitted that this brought him some peace that he was able to finish the work at the end.

In 2004 Di Modica was quoted saying "I have a lot of art to create. I have another 15, 20 years to do something beautiful." This timeline turned out to be remarkably accurate, when he passed on the 19th February 2021. The funeral took place in the church of Vittoria. As the coffin was carried out into the central square, the locality waited to applaud him out as they paid their respects.

Arturo Di Modica ran away from Sicily at 18 with a dream of becoming an artist. He chased this his entire life but despite his move to Florence then New York, he always remained Sicilian at heart. The last few years of his life marked him coming full circle, as he returned to Sicily, and was laid to rest in his hometown of Vittoria.