The period from 1970 onwards marked a shift in Simon’s output towards simpler, less grotesque, and more sensual drawings, mostly in pencil. It was maybe that during this period his life became less precarious and more settled; maybe also that he had found his own particular surrealist style and subject matter.

This collection of later drawings, made when the artist was in his sixties and seventies, show a mature, considered, enormously inventive visual vocabulary. Armand Simon’s work ranks readily with that of much better known artists like Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, and deserves to be better known.

In terms of recognition while he was still alive, Simon participated in the 1971 Hainaut Terre de Surréalisme exhibition at the Château Fort d’Écaussinnes-Lalaing, organised by his friend the painter Henry Lejeune and the group Les Racines du Manoir. Then in 1973 solo exhibitions were shown at the Château Fort d'Écaussinnes-Lalaing and at the House of Belgium in Kõln in Germany. Retrospectives were mounted in 1981 at the Ateliers du Grand-Hornu in Hornu, and in 1987 at the Botanique in Brussels.