 Păun soon developed an interest in surrealism, and became a member of the surrealist group formed at the very start of World War II (alongside Gherasim Luca, Gellu Naum, Trost, and Virgil Teodorescu).This small community survived clandestinely during the war years, when Păun himself was marginalized due to his Jewish ethnicity.It reemerged as a short-lived but very active group after the war, with many of their "collective" works written in French.