LOS ANGELES, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Larry Harvey, an American counter-traditional culture icon and the founder of the long-running celebration event or festival known as "Burning Man", was dead at 70, the organizers of the event said Saturday afternoon.
"Harvey was hospitalized April 4 after suffering a massive stroke at his home," the organizers said in a statement.
"For all of us who knew or worked with him, he was a landscape gardener, a philosopher, a visionary, a wit, a writer, an inspiration, an instigator, a mentor, and at one point a taxi driver and a bike messenger," the statement read.
"He was always a passionate advocate for our culture and principles that emanate from the Burning Man experience in the Black Rock Desert," it read.
The Burning Man event began in 1986 when Harvey burned the first "Man", which was a 8-foot structure made of scrap lumber, at San Francisco's Baker Beach with two dozen viewers.
It is now an annual event that takes place the week before Labor Day in Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada. The late summer event is described as an experiment in community and art.
Last year, about 70,000 people joined the week-long event and watched a 70-foot-tall "Vitruvian Man" figure burned.
Burning Man currently is organized by the Burning Man Project, a non-profit organization that, in 2014, succeeded a for-profit limited liability company (Black Rock City) formed in 1997 to represent the event's organizers.
