Woman Plaiting Her Hair

Pablo Picasso, late summer or fall 1906

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About This Work

A woman gathers and plaits her hair in a pose that is intimate but not sentimental. Picasso turns the domestic action into a study of large, simplified masses: the arms, hair, and head create a compact rhythm that holds the figure against the field behind her. The work preserves an everyday gesture while giving it the gravity of sculpture. Its force comes from the tension between private grooming and the deliberate, public construction of a new monumental figure style. The act of plaiting hair turns an ordinary gesture into a study of intimacy, time, and self-presentation. The catalog treats the repeated strands as both a descriptive motif and a possible symbol of care.

MoMA dates Woman Plaiting Her Hair to Paris in the late summer or fall of 1906 and records its medium, dimensions, and 1996 accession. It belongs to the same pre-Cubist period in which Picasso moved away from Rose Period lyricism toward broad, archaic-looking forms. The scene is not presented as a narrative anecdote. Instead, it shows how an ordinary action could become a laboratory for the artist’s emerging interest in weight, contour, and the sculptural reduction of the human form.

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