A European village with 500 residents has turned into an outdoor gallery

Andy Warhol’s banana, Salvador Dali’s clocks and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” are among the murals that have turned the village in Bulgaria into a spectacular open-air gallery.

With fewer than 500 inhabitants, Staro Zhelezare in southern Bulgaria is a world away from the mean streets of Manhattan, but its houses and barns have now been painted with some of the most famous images from New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

This picture shows a reproduction of the painting "Over the city" by Marc Chagall, painted on a wall of a house during an annual open-air gallery event, dedicated this year to the New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in the village of Staro Zhelezare near Plovdiv, on August 4. (AFP Photo)

Andy Warhol’s banana, Salvador Dali’s clocks and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” are among the murals that have turned the village into a spectacular open-air gallery in what is becoming an annual event.

Women walk past reproductions of the paintings (LtoR) "Jacob's ladder" by Helen Frankenthaler, "Picture with an Archer" by Vasily Kandinsky and "Number 10" by Mark Rothko, painted on a wall of a house during an annual open-air gallery event. (AFP Photo)

It is the fourth year that students from Poland have painted the walls of Staro Zhelezare, a project launched by Polish woman Katarzyna Piriankov and her Bulgarian-born husband Ventzislav who decided the theme this time should be the New York gallery.

An elderly women leaves her house as a reproduction of the famous banana graphic by Andy Warhol is painted on the wall, during an annual open-air gallery event, dedicated this year to the New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in the village of Staro Zhelezare near Plovdiv, on August 4. (AFP Photo)

“We always want to make our projects on the basis of contrast and absurdity, connecting them with special places,” said Piriankov, from the Polish city of Poznan.

“So, we decided to invite New York to Staro Zhelezare and its people. They also deserve to see the beauty of MoMA’s art works.”

As well as the locals, foreign visitors have come to see the street art.

“It is just amazing,” said Englishman Nigel Thompson. “I’ve never imagined something like that, you can even see Marcel Duchamp’s bicycle wheel.”