Find the three
At first it is a wall of red rock, and the three women take a moment to separate out. Start in the center: the tallest figure, head tipped back, arms lifted overhead, her face a calm mask of heavy almond eyes and a blunt nose. To her right sits a second woman, her face the clearest mask of the three, frontal, gouged, lifted straight from African carving. To the left a third figure bows her head, half-swallowed by the others. Their bodies do not so much touch as merge: try to follow one thigh or shoulder and it hands off to the next.
Notice the light. It does not fall from any one direction; each plane is shaded on its own terms, which is why the whole group reads as solid and flat at once, carved and yet pressed up against the surface. And look to the edges for the single concession of color: thin breaths of green against all that fired red, almost the only cool note in a picture packed as tight as brickwork. Find the three women and you have found the moment Picasso turned raw shock into something monumental and deliberate.