In 1925, he took part in the first exhibition by surrealist painters alongside Giorgio De Chirico, Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso, and in 1926 had his first solo exhibition.
In 1933 he was appointed for five years as a naval artist.
An exhibition devoted to his work was held at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1935, and his work was displayed at the 1937 World's Fair and the Montaigne Gallery in Paris in 1938.
He travelled and exhibited in galleries around the world: in New York at the Brummer Gallery in 1930 and 1933, at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936, at the Carstairs Gallery in 1949, in London in 1934, at the Wildenstein Gallery and in Hawaii in 1939 at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
In addition he created stage sets, several covers for Vogue magazine, and advertising posters.
His work is classed as surrealism, and is based on assemblages of everyday objects such as shells, vegetables and fruits, woollen reels, ears and seeds, eggs and ribbons arranged to create poetic images.