The impressive Charging Bull sculpture is something of a tourist attraction in New York's Wall Street neighbourhood, but when it began life it was illegal. The bull was secretly placed near the New York Stock Exhange Christmas tree one night in December 1989.

The sculpture was the work of a Sicilian, Arturo Di Modica, who had decided to create it after the Wall Street Crash of 1987.

The sculpture is massive: it is 5 metres long and weighs some 3.5 tons. It cost Di Modica $360,000 to make and transport the sculpture and, once the city authorities removed it, he was forced to pay enormous fines.

The City might not have liked Di Modica's "guerrilla art", but New Yorkers loved it. They saw it as a charming Christmas present to the people of New York and accused the City of being "The Grinch that stole Christmas."

A happy ending

A compromise was reached a few days later. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation took the statue out of storage and placed it (permanently) at Bowling Green Park, not far from Di Modica's original location. The statue does not belong to the City, but it is "on loan" from Di Modica.

‘Charging Bull’ vs. ‘Fearless Girl’

Arturo Di Modica, the sculptor who created “Charging Bull ” nearly 30 years ago, says “Fearless Girl ” miscasts the meaning of his statue and violates his copyright.

Mr. Di Modica said that “Fearless Girl” was an insult to his work, which he created after the stock market crashes in the late 1980s. “ She’s there attacking the bull,” he said.

Arturo di Modica is Sicilian. He was born in Vittoria, near Ragusa, in 1941, but moved to Florence in his late teens in order to study at the Academia delle Belle Arti. He then worked as a sculptor in Florence.

In 1973 he left for New York, where he opened a studio in Soho. He has made a similar " Bund Bull" in Shanghai and is currently working on an  enormous equine sculpture for his native Vittoria.