Milan - A little known side of famous US singer Bob Dylan has gone on show in Milan this week - a series of paintings of New Orleans that the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist produced between 2008 and 2011.

The film noir-like "New Orleans" series harks back to the city as it was in the 1940s and 1950s, with one painting showing a woman trying to break up a fight between two raincoat-clad hoodlums.

Dylan began painting at the height of his music career in the 1960s but has only relatively recently returned to the visual arts, publishing three collections of drawings since 1994.

The 71-year-old star, whose works already hang in various European art galleries, came to inaugurate the exhibition himself earlier this week.

"Each work is a fragment of a bigger story and each image is halfway between dream and memory," said a spokesperson for Milan City Hall, which is organising the show.

It said the paintings were based on photographic images and had "a strange atmosphere of suspense" with their stories of love and violence.

The 23 paintings will be on show until March 10.

The exhibition, which is free entry, is hosted in Milan's former city hall, the Palazzo Reale.