By the end of the 1920s, however, he was finding automatic drawing rather restricting, and he left the surrealist movement and turned instead to a more structured style, often producing works with a violent or erotic theme.

In 1932 he married his lover Paule Vézelay, a British abstract artist living in Paris, whose work also inspired him.

He was living in Tossa de Mar, a small fishing village on the Costa Brava, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which is reflected in a number of his paintings (he associated once more with the surrealists at the end of the 1930s).

With the assistance of Varian Fry in Marseille, Masson escaped the Nazi regime on a ship to the French island of Martinique from where he went on to the United States.

Upon arrival in New York City customs officials inspecting Masson's luggage found a cache of his erotic drawings.