ROME - The largest retrospective of Niki de Saint Phalle ever held in Italy has opened in Rome, showcasing work by the flamboyant French Pop Art protagonist best known for her huge 'Nana' sculptures of colourful, curvy women.

More than 100 paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs are on show at the Museo Fondazione Roma, most of which are on loan from de Saint Phalle's personal collection in San Diego.

De Saint Phalle (1930-2002) has a special link with Italy through her ambitious Tarot Garden, a series of gigantic sculptures inspired by Tarot cards that she spent 20 years creating in Tuscany with her husband, the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely.

''Niki de Saint Phalle has left numerous works in our country and now we can finally enjoy the international flavour of all her art,'' Museo Fondazione Roma President Emmanuele Emanuele said of the exhibition.

The show is split into four sections, with the first, Origins, concentrating on her surrealism-influenced early work when she first shot to fame for creating art with a .22 calibre rifle instead of a paintbrush.

A former model who only turned to art as a form of therapy after suffering a nervous breakdown, de Saint Phalle began her 'shooting paintings' while living in Paris, enclosing polythene bags full of paint in layers of plaster on wooden boards and then shooting at them with a rifle to make the paintings 'bleed'.

She sometimes invited other artists as well as members of the public to participate in these shoot-outs, which she staged in both France and the US.

De Saint Phalle stopped making the paintings in 1963, saying she ''had become addicted to shooting, like one becomes addicted to a drug''.

The second section of the Rome show, Nana Power, focuses on de Saint Phalle's extraordinary Nanas - monumental, cartoon-like sculptures of bulbous female figures, often in swirling bold-coloured swimming costumes, that can still be seen today in cities worldwide.

Among the most famous is her huge Guardian Angel Nana, suspended from the ceiling of Zurich's train station, and her Nana on a Dolphin, overlooking the River Elbe in Hamburg.

On display here are several 2.5-metre high Nanas, such as Big Lady (Black), who teeters in red high heels clasping a handbag.

The sprawling Tarot Garden inspired by Antoni Gaudi's Parc Guell in Barcelona that de Saint Phalle and Tinguely built in Garavicchio near the Tuscan coast is the focus of the exhibition's third section.

On show are preliminary sketches and small-scale models of some of the garden's 22 gigantic sculptures, which include a 15-metre-high Nana as well as mosaic-covered monsters, devils and sphinxes that tower over trees on the Tuscan hillside.

The final section of the exhibition, Spiritual Path, concentrates on de Saint Phalle's relationship with Tinguely, with whom she created the famous Stravinsky Fountain outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris, as well as works she made during her final years in California.

The show also includes a wide selection of photos of de Saint Phalle over the course of her career, including several snaps of her posing with her rifle.

Niki de Saint Phalle runs at the Museo Fondazione Roma until January 17.