[2] In 1923 he went to study in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where he met Alberto Giacometti, Picasso, and other avant-gardists, and where he was first exposed to African art.

He joined Gruppe 33, an anti-Fascist association of artists based in Basel, and was represented in the 1935 and 1936 Surrealist exhibits in Copenhagen.

[3] In 1940 he was forced to return to Switzerland due to World War II, leaving his own work and his collection behind.

[4] Much of the former was lost to theft or destroyed, but the collection was held up by French customs, and was preserved intact, and at the end of the war he was able to retrieve it.

[1][3] He continued to work in a variety of media including sculpture, lithography, collage and painting; he also taught at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich.