ABSTRACT
A member of the surrealist movement (see surrealism in Latin American art) in Paris in the 1930s, Paalen, his first wife, painter Alice Rahon and photographer Eva Sulzer travelled to Mexico in 1939 to pursue interests in indigenous art. He remained there, organizing (with Andre Breton and Cesar Moro) the 1940 International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City. As a painter, he was known especially for his use of ‘fumage’ (in which smoke is ‘accidentally’ applied to paper or canvas), but he was also a theorist and writer and an oppositional voice within surrealism. He became a Mexican citizen in 1947 and established residence in Taxco, Guerrero, where he committed suicide in 1959.
