Hollywood hardman Sylvester Stallone is set to launch a retrospective of his lengthy career as an artist in Russia.

The Rocky star has been invited to showcase his work at the State Russian Art Museum in St. Petersburg later this month (Oct13), and he admits he was pleasantly surprised to be selected for the gallery spotlight because he would love to cut back on making movies and spend more time painting.

He tells U.S. breakfast show Good Morning America, "It's very, very flattering because there's so many great artists involved, but for some reason, they chose me to go over there and show this 40-year retrospective of all the paintings from the beginning up until now, which I thought was really odd but also... a fantastic opportunity because that's eventually where I'd like to focus a great deal of my time."

Sylvester Stallone, 35 Years of Paintings, will feature 30 of the actor's artworks and will be on display for a month from 27 October (13).