Arturo Di Modica // Abstractions

  • Early Arturo Di Modica sculpture, bronze

    Early Bronze Abstraction, 1970

    ©Arturo Di Modica

    BACK TO: Home Page
     
    Before Arturo Di Modica became known for his monumental figurative bronzes, his practice was rooted in abstraction. During his years in Florence and his early period in New York, he produced a series of abstract sculptures that reveal the foundations of his visual language. Made largely from bronze and marble, these works emphasised mass, tension and dynamic form rather than direct representation. They were shaped through an intensely physical process: forged tools, hand built foundries and materials salvaged from demolition sites.
     
    These early abstractions display the traits that would later define his mature work, bold scale, structural clarity and a relentless commitment to sculptural presence. They were experiments in weight, balance and movement, allowing him to develop an instinctive understanding of how form occupies space. Though less widely known than his later public works, these pieces mark a crucial stage in his evolution, offering insight into how an artist who began with pure form would eventually channel that same energy into the expressive force of Il Cavallo, Charging Bull and Shanghai Bull.
    Enquire

  • 1968: UNTITLED BRONZE ABSTRACTIONS

    EXHIBITED 1968 VILLA MEDICI, FLORENCE
  • Visitors inspecting Di Modica's early bronzes at Villa Medici, Florence

    Visitors inspecting Di Modica's early bronzes at Villa Medici, Florence 

    ©Arturo Di Modica

    Arturo Di Modica’s early bronze abstractions emerged during his formative years in Florence, where he developed the technical foundation and artistic instincts that would shape his entire career. After leaving Sicily at eighteen to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, he immersed himself in the city’s dynamic postwar art scene and began building his own foundry, melting bronze by hand and drawing on the practical skills he had gained as a mechanic. These experiences allowed him to form a highly personal, tactile approach to sculpture.
     
    The abstract bronzes he produced in the mid-1960s reveal forms that stretch, twist and fracture, reflecting both his emotional intensity and his desire to push beyond academic convention. Works such as L’albero degli incubi (The Tree of Nightmares) show intertwined figures and organic structures that bridge representation and pure abstraction. This period became an essential testing ground, helping Di Modica refine his sense of movement, tension and physical force. By 1968, these experiments had laid the groundwork for the bold, dynamic sculptural vocabulary that would define his later masterpieces.

  • Early Abstractions

    After Henry Moore

  • "Henry Moore and I were working alongside each other in the same Carrara marble studio as he prepared for his Florence show. He would call me the young Michelangelo"

     
    - Arturo Di Modica
    In 1972, the influential British sculptor Henry Moore held a major exhibition in Florence, introducing Arturo Di Modica to a body of work defined by powerful abstracted forms and the innovative use of negative space. Moore’s approach left a strong impression, and the two artists later met in Pietrasanta, the historic marble town where both worked at the Fonderia Nicoli. Surrounded by the Carrara quarries that had shaped generations of sculptors, Di Modica absorbed Moore’s emphasis on mass, void and structural clarity. This encounter became an important moment in his early development, reinforcing his interest in monumental form and helping to shape the direction of his work in the years that followed.
  • Di Modica and his team loading the Rockefeller Centre marbles onto his truck.

    Di Modica and his team loading the Rockefeller Center marbles onto his truck.

    ©Arturo Di Modica

    1977: Rockefeller Center

    "Sculptor Rolling Stones" - Daily News
    Di Modica’s boldest early public gesture came in 1977, when he took a group of eight monumental marble abstractions carved in his Grand Street studio and transformed their quiet Battery Park exhibition into an unmissable event. After six weeks of little media attention and a dismissive response from New York Times critic Hilton Kramer, he acted independently: late one night he loaded the marbles onto a truck, drove them to Fifth Avenue and installed them illegally outside Rockefeller Center. The unsanctioned intervention blocked part of the street, drew immediate crowds and police, and landed on the front page of the New York Post. In a single decisive action, Di Modica turned the marbles into instruments of visibility, asserting his work directly into the public realm and marking a defining moment in his early career.
     

  • Abstract Sculptures

    Circa: Early 1980s
  • Abstract Free Form, 1980-81

    Abstract Free Form, 1980-81

    Marble, 144" x 48" x 48"

    ©Arturo Di Modica

    Abstract Free Form

    1980-81
    Abstract Free Form is a major marble sculpture from Arturo Di Modica’s early 1980s period, created at a scale that reflects his growing ambition in New York. Carved from Carrara marble, the work marks his transition from smaller experimental bronzes to large, spatially open forms that explore lift, balance and structural clarity.
     
    Its elongated, architectural presence reveals an artist testing the limits of both material and scale, refining an abstract language grounded in movement and deliberate tension. This piece stands as an important bridge between his early studio experimentation and the monumental public works that would come to define his later career.
     

  • Return to Abstraction

    LOVE IN SPACE SERIES (2000)
  • "With my sculptures and nude paintings I had already bothered the artistic environment of Florence."
     
    - Arturo Di Modica
    Love in Space (2000) marks Arturo Di Modica’s return to the abstract language that shaped his early career, this time executed in stainless steel. The series distils his interest in movement, balance and simplified form, translating the energy of his 1960s abstractions into a clean, contemporary material. These works reveal a sculptor revisiting his foundations with renewed precision, creating compact structures that explore rhythm and spatial tension on an intimate scale.
     

  • Life and Legacy

    Arturo Di Modica Biography

  • Arturo Di Modica

    HOME PAGE