Woman with Yellow Hair

A woman sleeps with her head resting on her arms, her yellow hair and rounded, flowing forms rendered in soft lilac and gold curves against a dark ground. The model is Marie-Therese Walter, Picasso's young lover and muse, whose serene profile and sensuous shapes inspired a great series of paintings. Now in the Guggenheim, Woman with Yellow Hair is among the tenderest - the angular violence of his earlier work giving way to languid, curving harmony, the sleeping woman an image of calm desire, part of the radiant outpouring Marie-Therese drew from him in these years.