Wolfgang Paalen (Austrian/Mexican, 1907–1959) was a painter, sculptor, and theorist who was associated with the Abstraction-Création group and the Surrealists. Born in Vienna, his father was a wealthy businessman, and his mother an actress. He became a member of Abstraction–Création in 1934, and was involved with the Surindépendants in Paris from 1932 to 1935. He became a member of the Surrealist movement in 1935 and invented a technique of painting with a smoking candle called Fumage.

In 1939, fleeing the Nazi uprising in Europe, he moved to Mexico City, and, together with many poets and intellectuals, was greeted enthusiastically. Paalen was a creative artist, and eventually rejected official Surrealism, which he felt was oppressive. It was then that he launched DYN.

He wrote about his liberation from the rigorous Surrealist movement while in Mexico, and published his magazine DYN. The opinion, poetry, and Fine Art magazine also emphasized the importance of ethnic art and native peoples. Like Jacob Bronowski of the Salk Institute who succeeded him, he worked on the implications of poetry, science, and painting.

By 1944, Paalen had produced six issues of DYN, and began the serious exploration of automatism and its implications on consciousness and the unconscious. His writings and paintings drew a lot of attention from artists around the workd, and is still discussed by artists, scientists, and poets. The movement he inspired, today known as Dynaton, holds an important niche in art history.

Paalen died of self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 54.

His works can be found in institutions around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the State Museum of Berlin.