The red sea of people: Hundreds of naked volunteers are spraypainted by US artist for interpretation of Wagner opera

Thousands of naked people painted from head to toe in red and gold.

The colourful scenes were the handiwork of American photographer Spencer Tunick.

For his latest creation the 45-year-old filled the German city’s Max-Joseph Platz with 1,700 nude volunteers, bringing to life his interpretation of scenes from Richard Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen.

1,700 members of the public agreed to strip nude and be painted for photographer Spencer Tunick’s latest installation in Munich on Saturday

Mr Tunick was invited to Munich to help the Bavarian State Opera launch their 2012 summer season.

The spectacular show is far from his first - the New Yorker has been photographing ‘live nude figure in public’ since 1992.

A decade later he set up his first mass photoshoot - capturing 500 naked volunteers in London’s Selfridges department store in 2003.

Since then he has set up nude shoots all over the world, photographing 7000 naked people in Barcelona and hundreds of nudes in New York’s Grand Central train station.

Last September he photographed 1,000 Israelis standing naked in the Dead Sea to raise awareness of the diminishing water levels.

According to his website, Mr Tunick’s installations enable individiuals ‘en masse, without their clothing, grouped together (to) metamorphose into a new shape.’

He added: ‘The individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together metamorphose into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon the landscape, like a substance.’

‘These grouped masses, which do no underscore sexuality, become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one’s views of nudity and privacy.”