AFP - Pal Sarkozy, the 82-year-old father of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has teamed up with a German computer artist for a show of joint artworks in the capital of his native Hungary.

"Out of Mind" is the title of the exhibition of more than 80 pictures by Sarkozy senior and his long-time friend, computer artist Werner Hornung, currently on show in the Abigail art gallery in downtown Budapest.

They include original drawings by Sarkozy senior and around 50 "giclee" art prints jointly created by him and Hornung and are selling for prices between 3,000-14,000 euros (4,120-19,220 dollars) apiece.

Giclee prints are ink-jet-based digital prints. Sarkozy, who worked as a graphic designer until he retired in 1995, provided the original sketches, which Hornung then digitalised and manipulated on his computer.

Sarkozy then reworked them again using real paint, and the final images were then scanned back into the computer and printed off in a limited edition.

"The most important is to find the idea, then I do a drawing, which goes into the computer. Then we start putting in the colours and adding the backgrounds. After the picture is assembled, I paint on it some more," Sarkozy told AFP Tuesday.

The French leader's father left Hungary in 1948 and initially scratched together a living with his drawings, before becoming a graphic designer in an advertising company.

According to the gallery, five or six pictures have already been sold in the first two days of the exhibition, but the gallery declined to reveal who the buyers were.

After a two-and-a-half week stint in Budapest, the show goes to Szolnok, near Sarkozy 's home village of Nagybocs, for a week. The exhibition will then go on to Cairo, Paris and finally Marrakech.

Two pieces in the show are not for sale, however: a portrait of Nicolas Sarkozy which the father gave to his son as a gift when he was elected president; and a portrait of Carla Bruni, which was a wedding gift to the presidential pair.