"One of Pablo Picasso's most important muses is the subject of this diverse and beautiful collection of drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, and ceramics. She was known as 'the girl with the ponytail' and her image has become one of the art world's most iconic. Sylvette David was a shy girl when she met Picasso on the Côte d'Azur in the spring of 1954. For the artist, Sylvette represented the ideal beauty of the time and she was his model for numerous works that covered nearly every aspect of his oeuvre. This book brings together the series of more than fifty masterpieces culled from museums and private collections from around the world. It further provides a unique insight into Picasso's art of the 1950s and the culture of the time.".

Foreword and acknowledgements / Georg Abegg and Christoph Grunenberg -- Ornamental arabesques and inauthentic lines : Picasso's "époque Sylvette" / Christophe Grunenberg -- "Painters have no business to think, except brush in hand" : Pablo Picasso's etchings for Honoré de Balzac's The Unknown Masterpiece / Anne Buschhoff -- The "période Françoise" and Picasso's "lithographic fever" / Markus Müller -- The Sylvette series : paintings and drawings / Vera Hausdorff -- "Picasso must be rejoicing up in heaven!" : interview with Sylvette David / Detlef Stein -- ... And God created woman : the changing image of women in the 1950s / Astrid Becker -- Pablo Picasso's sheet-metal sculptures, Vallauris 1954-1965 : design, materials and experimentation / Diana Widmaier Picasso -- Sylvette in concrete / Sylvia A. Antoniou-Nesjar -- Picasso's La Femme à la Clé (1953-54) : the sculptor, his model and his assistant / Elizabeth Cowling -- Jacqueline, or the wife as lady of the harem / Markus Müller -- The Picasso connection : the art dealer Michael Hertz and the Picasso collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen / Kai Hohenfeld -- In the footsteps of Picasso on the Côte D'Azur : a chronology / Kai Hohenfeld -- Catalogue raisonné of the Sylvette series.