In July 1934, Hélion exhibited his work at the Cahiers d'Art alongside Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Ghika. The following excerpt from the article 'La réalité dans la peinture' in the Cahiers d'Art publication, perhaps best summarizes the feeling of his work at the time: “The eyes light up only one small side of the head, edged by the eye-lids and eyebrows. The rest of the head is full of memories, dreams and imaginings fringed with night. It is necessary, by process of thought, to produce a strange amalgam of bits of shapes perceived one by one, of bits of the world which combine any old way. It is only by study and practice that one succeeds in conceiving the continuity of objects, adding the back which the eyes have not seen. Reality, then, is a matter of conception.” Cahiers d'Art, nos. 9-10, 1934, p. 256.



‘Composition’, 1934, was completed the year Hélion made his first trip to London with Gallatin, where he met Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, John Piper, Myfanwy Evans [Piper] and the art historian Herbert Read. The following year, in an article devoted to Hélion, Herbert Read wrote: “[Hélion] is one of the most mature leaders of the modern movement, in the direct line of descent from Cézanne, Seurat, Gris and Léger….” H. Read, ‘Jean Hélion’, ‘Axis’, no. 4, November 1935, p. 3.



A comparable oil entitled 'Ile-de-France', 1935, that forms part of the Tate Gallery, London collection, can be found in H.C. Cousseau, ‘Hélion’, Editions du regard, Paris, 1992, p. 82