He also accompanied his parents wherever they went, and his exposure to Paris street-life, the cabarets and the cinema provided him with much of the inspiration for his early work.

He had befriended Gertrude Stein, the American poet, writer and collector of modern art, whose portrait he painted in 1930, being the second artist after Pablo Picasso to do so.

He sold work to collectors and museums and was assigned to paint a series of murals in a theater in Hartford, Connecticut.

The journey to Mexico meant the fulfillment of a long-held wish for him and from this time forward the Mexican landscape was never to disappear from his work.

[8] During the late 1930s Surrealist exhibitions were held in a number of major European cities and together with Georges Hugnet, Kristians Tonny was involved in organizing the first international Surrealist exhibition in the Netherlands, held in the art gallery owned by his parents, Galerie Robert in Amsterdam.

The reason for this being that Georges Hugnet didn't believe that, with the exception of Kristians Tonny, there were any Dutch Surrealists.

He and his wife tried to emigrate to the United States, but, in spite of all the formalities having been completed, the journey didn't happen for reasons both financial and political.

He sold his works, made book illustrations and painted murals in the newly built casino in St. Malo.

He led a reclusive existence in the Netherlands and was not able to properly engage with the Dutch art community of that period, this being due, in some part, to the lack of interest in Surrealism at the time.