Three Women at the Spring

Pablo Picasso, 1921 · Gallery 513 · Floor 5

Picasso spent the summer of 1921 painting these three women over and over. Same three women. Same setup. Move a hand. Shift a leg. Start again. And eventually he gets here. Nearly seven feet tall. Look at these women. Huge. Heavy. Built like Roman statues somebody rolled in off a temple. Big hands. Big feet. Everybody looks like they weigh a ton. And here's the strange part. At the exact same time, in the same garage studio, Picasso was painting Three Musicians. That loud, flat, chopped-up thing. Costumes. Color. Cubism. He was making them side by side. One painting looks like Picasso just blew painting apart. The other looks like he went back two thousand years. Same guy. Same summer. But come back to these three. Nobody's moving. The middle one leans her cheek into her hand. The woman on the right sits sideways, fingers resting on that big jug. Like they've got forever. Now look at the middle woman's other hand. Palm up. Held right underneath where you'd expect the spring to run. And nothing touches it. The spring just... doesn't show up where it should.

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