While Rufino Tamayo admired the work and especially the technical contributions of Abstract Expressionist artists such as Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), he critiqued the movement for failing to build a connection between the work of art and the viewer. For Tamayo, it was important for works of art to be part of a shared human experience and to be understood, a quality he defined as “humanism.” In Trembling Woman Tamayo invokes Pollock’s signature drips in the lithographic medium to add an emotional or psychological element to the physical form of the figure as she starts to dematerialize into the textured splashes of ink around her.

The lower left corner of the lithograph is embossed with the logo of the Taller de Gráfica Mexicana (Mexican Graphic Arts Workshop) in Mexico City. Trembling Woman is the first print that Tamayo made at the Taller, working closely with the workshop over the next several years to explore further ways to incorporate texture and volume into printmaking.