'Rocky' star displays his art collection

Actor Sylvester Stallone is best remembered for a character that gets the pulp beaten out of him, though his image as a tough hasn't lessened his appreciation for one of the finer things in life, painting.

Now Stallone, 68, who says he likes to paint in his pajamas or in the nude, is getting attention from art critics as he shows off some of his decades of work at a retrospective in Nice, France.

He has previously exhibited in St Moritz, Switzerland, and the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Russia before his recent display at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

However, the new show, less than an hour from where the the Cannes Film Festival was recently held, sees a push for the Expendables star to be taken seriously as an artist.

"We avoided like the devil anything that would make this a Hollywood thing," gallery director Mathias Rastorfer told The Telegraph

Stallone's acting career isn't far from his work, however, in the exhibition 'Real Love', which opened earlier this month and ends this weekend.

One of the most talked about pieces in the exhibit that includes works from as recently as 2015 is On Finding Rocky, a 1975 painting of the boxer that Stallone made while writing and starring in the movie of the same name.

Stallone said that he wanted to see what his Rocky Balboa character would look like before giving him lines or sending him up staircases in Philadelphia.

"If he looked interesting visually, then I think that he would translate through to literature and then cinema. I know it sounds ambitious but that was the genesis of Rocky," he said.

He also finds a source in creative energy from one of his most popular, though less elegant, characters.

"Don’t take this sarcastically, but I am trying to prove John Rambo’s subconsciousness," Stallone said.

"It’s like being lost in a haunted forest, so that’s always a source of cinematic inspiration."