Di Modica's Fighting Horses Take Piazza Università as Donation Stirs Debate in Vittoria

In piazza Università, at the centre of Catania, the installation of a large patinated bronze is in its final stages: two horses rearing on their hind legs until their front hooves touch. Eight metres high and fourteen wide, "Fighting Horses" was made in 2019 by Arturo Di Modica, the Sicilian sculptor known worldwide for the "Charging Bull" of Wall Street. Ragusa News identifies him as a Vittoria native.

According to the Comune di Catania, the work was conceived as a symbol of strength, movement and aspiration, and the administration describes the gesture of the two animals as recalling the courtship ritual between a male and a female. Ragusa H24 reports that, in the administration's intentions, the sculpture could become a new recognisable image of the city.

The arrival is bound up, in La Sicilia's account, with a decision by the Di Modica family to donate one of his works to Catania, a decision the paper says has set off political and cultural debate. Under a Vittoria heading, La Sicilia reports that the municipal councillor Valeria Zorzi attacked the city administration over what she considers a failure to valorise a sculptor of international fame. According to Zorzi, the family's choice is clear evidence of a bond that, in recent years, the city that gave the celebrated author his birth had not adequately cultivated. In the same report's headline, she calls the donation to Catania "uno schiaffo elegante ma sonoro" — an elegant but loud slap.

Not everyone in Catania has welcomed the sculpture. Ragusa News reports that disappointment and irony dominate the social-media conversations of Catanesi, and that criticism attaches above all to where the work has been placed. On how long it will stand there, the accounts differ in hedging: Ragusa News states that the installation will remain for a year, while Ragusa H24 writes only that it appears to be temporary.

Ragusa H24's headline frames the arrival as a conquest — the horses of Di Modica conquering Catania — and adds a note its available excerpt leaves unexplained: "but the dream was the Ippari". In the square itself, what stands is the pair of animals balanced on their hind legs, front hooves meeting, with the question of how long they will stay reported rather than settled.