Hélion's early works are similar to manner to Soutine. He met Otto Freundlich in 1925 and later described him as the first abstract painter he had ever met, saying, "At that time I had no idea there was such a thing as abstract art." The next year he was introduced to cubism by the Uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres-García, and in 1928 he exhibited for the first time, showing two paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. His work of this period, mostly still lifes, is close in style to that of Torres-García, with simplified color and bold outlines. In 1930, he joined the group Art Concret and adopted a vocabulary of abstract rectilinear form that derived from the Neoplasticists Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. During the following years Hélion's art evolved to include curved lines and volumetric forms. He became recognized as a leading abstract painter, as well as an eloquent critic and theoretician whose writings were frequently published in "Cahiers d'Art" and elsewhere during the 1930s.