He studied at the École des Arts Decoratifs and at the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris. In the beginning his work was influenced by the Impressionist Art, later on,  he approached M.Duchamp (1910) and eventually became involved with Cubism (1911) and Dadaism (1919).
After a period in the United States he went back to Europe in 1918 where he was a precursor togheter with Duchamp and Man Ray of the Dadaist movement. It was in the Côte d’Azur where he started his most surrealist period in 1925, to which he returned after an abstract period in the years following the second world war.