During this time she frequented art and literary circles in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood, and published a novel, Raquel, as well as a volume of poetry, Lost Hills.

[4] When she returned to the United States and settled on West Fourth Street in New York City, the cultural community there was rapidly galvanizing, attracting artists and writers of all backgrounds through the Works Progress Administration and generating new styles that challenged the Regionalism and Social Realism for which the U.S. was known.

[4] After seeing Kurt Schwitters' collages shown at the Rose Fried Gallery in 1948, she was struck by "the abstract form and tactile quality, at how much power and complexity there could be on so small a scale.

She wrote a series of poems in the late 1930s and 40s called Lines to a Young Painter, and her circle of friends included artists and writers of all kinds.

[4] Her artistic work first took the form of printmaking—she made prints with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, a hub for the American and European avant-garde—followed by oil painting, and by the mid-1940s she was designing costumes and backdrops for ballet performances.

Their small scale and her use of pastel colors provoked varying critical responses in the early 1950s; many writers commented on the works' "feminine" qualities.