Stanley Marsh 3, the quirky Texas philanthropist and businessman who created the iconic Cadillac Ranch, died on Tuesday. He was 76-years-old.
March’s death was first reported by the Associated Press. His criminal attorney, Paul Nugent, confirmed his death.
In addition to being an heir to his family’s oil business, he became a television executive and successful banker. However, he also was an artist and the Cadillac Ranch was his most famous creation. The sculpture featured rows and rows of Cadillacs partially buried in the ground west of Amarillo, Texas.
Cadillac Ranch became a tourist attraction in the 1970s. The cars were moved a mile in 1997 and have been repainted several times.
The Cadillacs were originally covered in grafitti. “All that graffiti and vandalism gave them a real patina, like those Chinese vases that increase in value with each crack,” he said in 1990. “It shows people love their monuments.”
Despite his fame as an artist, his image was hurt in the past few years, after he faced lawsuits for allegedly paying underage boys to have sex with them. According to The Los Angeles Times, the 10 civil suits were later settled out of court, but the settlements remain private.
Marsh was born Stanley Marsh III in Amarillo on Jan. 31, 1938. He decided not to follow in his father and grandfather into the oil business and changed the “III” to the Arabic numeral “3.”