HONG KONG, March 30 -- Pablo Picasso's oil painting "Femme assise, robe bleue" was exhibited in Christie's Hong Kong office Thursday.

The painting is a portrait of Picasso's lover Dora Maar, with an estimated 35 million to 50 million U.S. dollars in Christie's New York spring auction in May.

Painted in 1939, the work was filled with the unique character, distortions and tension that mark Picasso's greatest portraits of Maar, Giovanna Bertazzoni, deputy chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art of Christie's said.

The demand for Picasso's portraits of Maar is at an all-time high, Bertazzoni said, adding the canvas is a powerful example of Picasso's creative imagination and the passion which Maar inspired in him.

Some critics have linked the pictures of Maar specifically to tension caused by World War II, and it was both Maar's personality and a wider sense of unease at the situation in the world that Picasso managed to express in the bracing painting.

The exhibition in Hong Kong will last till April 6. The painting will be auctioned on May 15 in New York.