Man.

One day Man arrived



It is not well known what he did before, but in 1962 Manfred Gnädinger arrived to the end of the world, the coast of Galicia. At the time of his arrival the individual popularly known as Man was a 25 year old, well dressed and educated German; people say he felt in love with the teacher of the small village of Camelle, but the unrequited love drove him mad.

Becoming concerned of ecological issues he decided to change his lifestyle. He built himself a small hut on the beach where dressed only with a loincloth, he spent the next 40 years there until the time of his death. Without electricity, or any other modern comfort he carried out a simple life, only eating seaweeds and crops he could cultivate himself, he dedicated his life to create art with trash he could find washed by the sea.





Soon the eccentricity of Man was known locally, people became curious of the Man appearance and art, at first, they refer to him as the crazy German, but with the decades the perception of the locals changed and he became accepted by most.

As people started to visit him for curiosity, he began to ask money to conserve his museum, that is what he refer his hut as; 100 pesetas per visitor, or 0.6 current euros, for this fee Man would give visitors a small notebook and ask to leave him a message and do some drawings as a commemoration to the Museum of Man.

Man continued to live his simple existence, walking barefoot 5 km a day and swimming every day in his loincloth being summer or winter. One day he had a nightmare, in his dream he saw a black whale stranded on his beach, and he started to tell locals he would die when this sighting happen.

A few years later the prestige oil tanker split in half and sank near the coast of Galicia, Tons of oil washed up in his beach and covered most of his sculptures. A month after he saw his life work and the natural environment he enjoyed and sustained him for decades destroyed before his eyes, man was found dead in his hut, locals believe he died of melancholy.



He donated his museum to the city among all his belongings, thousands of notebooks from their visitors, paintings, writings and about 120k euros from what he collected from visitors, amount he designated to build a true museum for his work.

Someday all your hard work could be destroyed by a uncontrollable force, it could be mankind avarice, natural force, or the act of mods... We all are man



en.wikipedia.org...
www.lavozdegalicia.es...
www.lavozdegalicia.es...

originally posted by: Indigent
Someday all your hard work could be destroyed by a uncontrollable force, it could be mankind avarice, natural force, or the act of mods... We all are man

Better still to be a creator than a destroyer, particularly a polluter.

Plus, I don't think a natural force destroys so much as rearranges, though I suppose that depends upon where you're standing.

Great thread, thanks

a reply to: Anaana

Thanks,

10 years after his dead a strong storm rearranged for good the remaining of his sculptures

a reply to: Indigent

I don't think anyone who loves the sea, as I am sure he must have done, could be too sad other than in a poetic sense perhaps, it's what the sea does sooner or later. That's why artists and writers are drawn to the sea I think, because of it's cruel indifference, it demonstration of impermanence...but that could be because I'm most attached to the North East coast of Britain...and it's beautifully grim in places, and vicious in others, and my favourite spot, Whitby, has attracted the moodier end of the writing spectrum usually...perhaps he would have liked them to have decayed more slowly, left more of a lasting mark of him there.

I think he wouldn't have been so disheartened to see his work destroyed by a storm as he was to see the damage caused by the oil spill. To such a person, that must have been devastating, he was caring for the beach as much as he was adorning it. That kind of thing, human nature at it's most wantonly careless, I suppose could make you lose the will the live, the storm would have just given him more work to do and therefore given him his reason to live.

Sad for us then, we can't enjoy it, but I think he'd be okay with it.

Heavy.