Walter Kurt Wiemken abandoned an early abstract painting style influenced by German Expressionism and Fauvism in favor of Surrealist political allegories favoring deep, luminous color and symbolically organized composition. He used haunting symbioses of humans and machines, imaginary creatures, and heavily populated two-dimensional landscapes to comment on the socio-political environment in Switzerland in the lead-up to World War II. Wiemken was closely associated with painters Otto Abt and Walter Bodmer, founding the collective 1933 Group with them.