Julian Trevelyan lived in Paris from 1931–4 where he studied art and worked at Stanley Hayter’s print studio Atelier 17. There he met Miró, Ernst, Giacometti and Picasso and became a close friend of Alexander Calder, all of whom were associated with Surrealism.

He described those years as living ‘the life of a somnambulist groping at experiences, often dangerously, tottering on the edge of dark precipices and suddenly veering away in another direction’. His work at that time often combined simple free-floating forms with a taut architectural background, as seen here.