Künstlerdorf Neumarkt an der Raab

Künstlerdorf Neumarkt an der Raab lies in the small village of Neumarkt an der Raab in Burgenland, near the Hungarian border. The village belongs to the municipality of Sankt Martin an der Raab and contains a group of buildings protected as historic monuments. The ensemble centres on an old smoke-kitchen house that the painter Feri Zotter saved from demolition in 1964 and turned into an artists’ studio. The village became a magnet for writers and painters after Zotter’s intervention. Peter Handke wrote The Goalie’s Anxiety of the Penalty Kick here, while Peter Turrini and Wilhelm Pevny drafted the Alpensaga. Other literary figures such as Gerhard Roth, Barbara Frischmuth and Friederike Mayröcker worked in the village, joined by playwrights Wolfgang Bauer and Werner Schwab. The sculptor school from Hallein has run summer workshops in the workshops since 1999, introducing young artists to printmaking and photography. Visitors walk among the listed buildings: the converted smoke-kitchen house, the tiny reception house called Zweggerlhaus, the Hypercubus media library, the village gallery once used as a school, and the oldest cinema in Burgenland housed in the Pavillon. Temporary exhibitions, concerts, theatre performances and readings fill the programme organised by the local cultural association.