Alongside Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, Masson distanced himself from the movement's leader, André Breton, at the time. The preoccupations of these “dissident surrealists” lie in the sacrificial violence and erotic impulse of the human being, the primordial depths of instinct. Sexuality became a central notion in their artistic research.

Masson's work at this time is dominated by hybrid creatures of metamorphoses where form effonders and the frames of being crack, unite in a symbolic, biomorphic language. The erotic impulse, often aggressive in Masson's work, has the capacity to effacerate the “self”.

André Masson had originally titled this sculpture “Le Sein offert” (The Offered Breast), but he abandoned this title from the outset for “La Femme tourmentée” (The Tormented Woman), one of the artist's favorite themes: the violence of the world and erotic impulses.