Sylvester Stallone Shows Off His Abstract Art Inspired by Rocky and Rambo

Sylvester Stallone displays decades of artwork in a new retrospective exhibit in France.

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Complex Original

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Sylvester Stallone has already blessed us with Rocky and Rambo, but now the 68-year-old action star is giving us something a bit more deep and a lot more personal: an extensive look at his fine art.

That’s right, the actor known for his tough-guy roles has been creating art since he was 8 years old, and recently showed off his collection of abstract paintings in a retrospective exhibit in France called Real Love. Over the past few decades, Stallone has completed over 300 pieces of work, some of which has been displayed in places like the Galerie Gmurzynska, the State Russian Museum, and even Art Basel Miami Beach. But this latest exhibit was held for one reason and one reason only, to show the world he is a serious artist.

“When you hear about it for the first time, you think, ‘Ah yes, one of the Hollywood painters’,” gallery director Mathias Rastorfer told the Telegraph. “So the whole point of a serious gallery showing someone like Sylvester Stallone was to show what’s possible in art, and to make this a serious endeavour and not a society endeavour. We avoided like the devil anything that would make this a Hollywood thing.”

Stallone, who claims he enjoys painting in either pajamas or the nude (uh, yeah), says he gets a lot of inspiration from his iconic movie roles, specifically Rocky and Rambo.

“Don’t take this sarcastically, but I am trying to prove John Rambo’s subconsciousness,” Stallone said while explaining one of his pieces. “It’s like being lost in a haunted forest, so that’s always a source of cinematic inspiration.”

Sylvester Stallone, Real Love: Paintings 1975-2015 is on display at the Musée d’art moderne et d’art contemporain in Nice, France, until tomorrow. You can check out several of the pieces included in the show below. 

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