The Galerie Huit in Paris was where his first exhibition was set up in 1952. However, the art scene in New York was starting to gain new popularity and Held moved back there. During one of his solo Abstract expressionist exhibitions in 1959, Held's large-scale paintings of colourful, simple abstract geometric forms gained increasing recognition in America and Europe. In 1962, he was appointed to the Yale University Faculty Of Art (where he would teach until 1980). In 1965, the critic Irving Sandler curated the critically acclaimed "Concrete Expressionism" show at New York University featuring the work of painters Al Held and Knox Martin and the sculptors Ronald Bladen, George Sugarman and David Weinrib.