[7] She frequented the avant-garde artists and writers of the Parisian Rive Gauche, among them Piet Mondrian and Yves Tanguy, and became interested in socialist politics, in photography and in Surrealism.

There Kar came into contact with Egyptian Surrealists including Ikbal El Alailly and Georges Henein, and with members of the Art and Liberty movement.

In the same year she divorced Belali and married the British poet and art dealer Victor Musgrave, who at that time was in the RAF;[8] in 1945 they moved to London.

[8] Also in 1956, Terry Taylor was introduced to Kar and Musgrave by Colin MacInnes, who had a room above the Gallery One premises, which had by then moved to 20 D'Arblay Street, Soho.

Taylor, then in his early twenties, became Kar's assistant and within a short time also her lover; Musgrave apparently did not mind.

At Musgrave's suggestion, she formed a group with three of the applicants, Leslie Smithers, Lawrence Ellar and John Couzins.