Diego Rivera’s art was shaped by Mexican socialist politics and by the Mexican Renaissance, which sought to revive native cultures and traditions as a means of unifying national identity. Rivera drew artistic inspiration from his personal collection of over 59,000 ancient American art objects, the largest in Mexico. He housed them in a Mayan Revival museum whose portal held the inscription: “I give back to my people that which they can rescue from the artistic legacy of their ancestors.”

The two female figures in "Two Women and a Child" recall similar Olmec stone figures or Jalisco ceramics, which would have provided appropriate historical precedents for Rivera’s idealized visions of working-class Mexicans. Seated on the ground, the mother cradling her infant embodies fertility and procreation, while the empty food bowl adjacent to her companion suggests the need for nourishment. Rivera implies solidarity with his subjects by signing his name on their ceramic dish.