In 1936, Banting took part in the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, where he showed five works; two oils, two watercolours, and a surrealist object. Later the same year, he was also included n the seminal Fantastic Art, Surrealism, Dada show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Marcel Duchamp was impressed by his work, and invited him to show at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris in 1938.

Brains Breathing was shown this same year, at a major one-man
exhibition of the artist's work at the Storran Galleries, Piccadilly.
The gallery was run by Eardley Knollys - a close friend of Picasso's - and was an important site for modern art, holding shows of Modigliani, Victor Pasmore, and Ivon Hitchens. Banting's show proved a great success, and Brains Breathing was singled out for special praise by the critic who reviewed the exhibition for the New Statesman. He wrote: "These are pictures to raise one's spirits, and some of them, Brains Breathing, for example, would be ornaments to any house, so delicate are they and so imaginative."

The review concludes "Mr Banting is obviously spellbound by the quiddity of objects, the bonniness of bone, the leafiness of leaves. He has an acute sense of decorative colour, though sometimes he plunges into monstrous combinations, just for fun. He is Surrealist in the unexpectedness of his inventions but lacks the solemnity that makes most Surrealists so tedious. Indeed, his work reminds one rather of English nonsense verse: the cat and the fiddle, the wise men of Gotham, the owl and the pussycat. These are paintings that raise one's spirits... Mr Banting's exhibition ought to be a considerable success for gaiety, a virtue to which most English painters are unable to rise."