Having found refuge in the South of France during the occupation, it was here that Engel met the love of his life and his muse forevermore, and chose the name ENGEL-PAK. Here, he spent time with Marcel Duchamp in before Duchamp left for America with his iconic suitcase. Engel delved away from all figuration, into the freedom of gestural abstraction. In 1946, his work was exhibited with Serge Poliakoff and Marie Raymond, and was also featured alongside Gerard Schneider and Hans Hartung. His friend Paul Eluard, the famous Surrealist poet asked him to illustrate some of his writings, which were published in 1947. Engel-Pak was full of renewed energy after the war and allowed his creative expression to flourish without theoretical or philosophical constraint. His works show bursts of energy and colour evolving further towards complete abstraction, spearheading the way for more avantgarde developments in his research, independent from the movements of the times. In 1946 he participated in the first “Salon des Réalités Nouvelles” in Paris, as he would in person each subsequent year until 1956 and posthumously until the Salon’s retrospective in 1980.