paratonnerre (Gallows with Lightning Rod), a larger-than-life wooden gibbet with lightning rods and a dedication plaque to the German philosopher and experimental physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg; Le moi et le soi (The Ego and the Id); and a version of Chaise envahie de lierre. Perhaps inspired by the revolving doors used as movable walls for paintings and metaphorically called portes ‘revolver’ in the surrealist exhibition, Paalen designed a pistol shape from different small animal bones, which he fastened to a box with a tray and glass lid lined with black velvet. As in museum displays of valuable paleontological discoveries, he included its title on a copper plate inscribed ‘Le génie de l'espèce’ (The Genius, or Engineering, of the Species). The paintings of 1938–39 and plans for Mexico 1938 he showed his new fumage paintings, which made his reputation as painter, in a show in Renou et Colle Gallery in Paris, with a catalogue text by Breton, written in Bermuda on his trip to Mexico. He published also the Lichtenberg-text Göttinger Taschenalmanach in surrealist magazine Minotaure with illustrations by him. In 1938 the Paalens socialised with Frida Kahlo during her visit in Paris. She invited the couple to Mexico, where Paalen wanted to organize a Surrealist exhibition together with Breton. It was Marcel Duchamp who recommended Paalen to Peggy Guggenheim and the New York dealer Julien Levy. "Dear Julien, P. S. to my recent letter: Do you know Paalen's work? I suppose that you have seen some reproductions. Among the young Surr[ealists]'s he ought to come out – he paints scenes "for" a sorcerer (you never see the witches). All this to hope that you might show him in N.Y", Duchamp had already written to Levy in January 1939; in March he added a note about the invitation to the Guggenheim show: “In London with Mary [Reynolds] for a few days – Just came to see the last day of Paalen's show – His "sorcelleries" look real on the walls – Hope you try them in N.Y." After his one-man-show at the Guggenheim Jeune Gallery in Cork Street, London, as the first of the surrealists, he decided to leave Europe and travelled first to New York in May 1939 together with his wife Alice and friend Eva Sulzer. The same year he traveled through British Columbia where he collected a major totem house-screen with the representation of a bear-woman, accessible through