Martha Rosler, Cleaning the Drapes, from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, c. 1967–1972. Photomontage (chromogenic print), 43.3 × 59.4 cm. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
There's something particularly accessible about collage: it starts with existing materials-papers, photographs, newspapers, fabrics, and printed images- and makes them coexist in a new way. This act of cutting, selecting, layering, and pasting seems simple, yet it profoundly changed the history of 20th-century art and remains very present in contemporary creation.
Table of Contents
- What is collage: definition and main characteristics
- History of collage: its origins with Picasso and Braque
- Types of collage: paper, digital, photomontage, and mixed media
- Notable artists who made collage their primary language
- Collage in contemporary art: relevance and new forms
What you will learn in this article
- What collage is, its main characteristics, and how it differs from other traditional art techniques.
- How the technique evolved from the first Cubist experiments of Picasso and Braque to its full integration into the current market.
- What are the main types of collage and which artists are key to understanding its development and contemporary relevance.
What is collage: definition and main characteristics
Collage is an artistic technique that involves assembling and gluing various elements such as paper fragments, photographs, newspaper clippings, or fabrics onto a flat support to create a unified work.
The word comes from the French verb coller, meaning “to glue.” The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) uses this term to refer to both the physical technique and the resulting work from arranging these fragments on a support.
The definition seems simple until we look at what can happen within a work: a photograph may appear alongside a commercial label; a piece of newspaper may become a shadow; a real texture may replace another that, in the past, would have had to be painted. This is one of the keys to the art of collage: it allows images from everyday life to be introduced directly into the artwork.
The collage technique offers great compositional freedom. Materials can be cut with precision or torn, arranged into an orderly composition or a deliberately fragmented one, and used sparingly or built up in multiple layers. This richness of materials, textures, and contrasts can also play a valuable role in professional environments. At ArteGlobaL, we assist companies in creating and managing collections, acquiring artworks, and developing customized cultural projects. Discover our comprehensive corporate art service here.
History of collage: its origins with Picasso and Braque
Although gluing souvenirs, prints, and papers was a decorative practice predating the 20th century, the history of collage as a central language of modern art places its decisive moment in 1912.
Pablo Picasso, Naturaleza muerta con silla de rejilla, 1912, oil, oilcloth, and rope on canvas, 29 × 37 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris. View available works by Picasso in our Art Shop.
That year, Pablo Picasso incorporated a piece of printed oilcloth imitating chair caning into his famous work Still Life with Chair Caning. Shortly after, Georges Braque (1882–1963) developed papier collé, based specifically on the incorporation of painted and cut papers onto the support.
This paradigm shift was enormous: the artwork could now contain objects from the everyday world instead of merely representing them through traditional painting. From then on, collage became an extremely versatile medium that would influence later avant-garde movements. If you would like to better understand the impact of these disruptive trends, you can explore our analysis of the essential facts you should know about Surrealism a movement that embraced collage and photomontage as indispensable tools for exploring the subconscious.
Types of collage: paper, digital, photomontage, and mixed media
Collage admits so many variations that its artistic boundaries are extremely porous and flexible.
Georges Braque, Fruit Dish and Glass (Compotier et verre), 1912, charcoal, cut-and-pasted painted paper, and gouache on paper, 62.9 × 45.7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Traditional Paper Collage
Paper collage is the most recognizable style and the starting point of the technique. It uses newspapers, magazine pages, colored, printed, or painted papers, and other similar cellulosic materials. Cubist papier collé strictly belongs to this family.
Photomontage and Hannah Höch's Political Role
Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, paper collage on cardboard, 114 × 90 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Photomontage is a form of collage based primarily on the combination and layering of photographs, often together with text or other graphic elements characteristic of the period. Hannah Höch (1889–1978) was one of the fundamental figures of Dadaist photomontage in Berlin. From the late 1910s, she used images from magazines and other printed media to construct satirical compositions that addressed politics, mass culture, and gender roles. Her valuable contribution not only transformed the avant-gardes but also rightly places her among the famous female painters who changed art history.
Mixed Media Collage and Digital Development
Mixed media collage further expands the plastic repertoire of artworks, allowing for the combination of papers with paint, ink, fabrics, small found three-dimensional objects, or various printing techniques.
Meanwhile, in the contemporary landscape, digital collage stands out, which is built entirely virtually through the use of image layers, vectors, and computer editing tools.
This wide variety of techniques means that, when buying art, it is very enriching to analyze the materials used in detail. If you are considering acquiring original graphic works on paper or serialized editions based on these mixed media techniques, we suggest consulting our guide on the numbering in graphic work and its keys to collecting with discernment.In our Art Shopyou can explore works and observe how different creators use paper, print, photography, and mixed media to construct aesthetic discourses that reveal much more when viewed closely.
Notable artists who made collage their primary language
Some creators took collage far beyond a specific workshop technique and made it the backbone of their visual identity.
Kurt Schwitters and the Merz Concept
Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture 32 A. The Cherry Picture, 1921, collage and assemblage on board, 91.8 × 70.5 cm, MoMA, New York.
Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) was one of the first to radically expand the possibilities of the technique. He incorporated paper scraps, tram tickets, product labels, and discarded objects found in the street. He coined the term Merz to define an integrative practice that began with small collages and assemblages and eventually extended to the rest of his spatial and sculptural production.
Romare Bearden: Memory and African American Collage
Romare Bearden, The Block, 1971, collage of various papers with paint on fiberboard, 121.9 × 548.6 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Decades later, North-American artist Romare Bearden (1911–1988) found this technique to be an ideal tool for constructing complex images from cultural fragments. From the mid-1960s, he made collage his primary creative medium to explore the African American experience, collective memory, migration, and the contrasts between urban and rural life.
Collage in contemporary art: relevance and new forms
More than a century after those first Cubist experiments, contemporary collage maintains its greatest virtue: working with images and materials that already contain a backstory to give them a completely new meaning.
Ishola Akpo, Kpodjito III, 2024, digital photograph and archival photograph, cotton thread, and paper, 62 × 46 cm.
Beninese artist Ishola Akpo (1983) explores this capacity for re-signification in his series Traces d’une Reine, developed from historical archives linked to the ancient Kingdom of Dahomey. Through collage and thread stitching on paper, he intervenes ancient documents by incorporating portraits of contemporary women, thereby shifting the prominence from the male figures that dominate historical records. In this way, he uses materials steeped in history to question official narratives and give visibility to traditionally marginalized figures.
This act of appropriating an existing image and modifying its original context remains one of the keys to current creation. Today, materials can come from an old magazine, a family photograph, a historical archive, a digital print, or an internet file. In a culture saturated with fast-circulating visual stimuli, collage offers the artist the possibility of altering common associations and constructing new critical interpretations.
Learning to identify these decisions also enriches our way of appreciating a work of art. In The Club by ArteGlobaL we regularly delve into the analysis of artists, movements, and key tools to help you develop a more informed perspective and approach collecting with greater discernment and confidence.
And if you are thinking of taking your first steps in acquiring artworks or wish to guide your decisions as a collector, we recommend reviewing our basic guide to starting your art collection. You can also schedule an initial converstion with one of our expert advisorsto analyze your interests and assess which path might best fit your budget and goals.
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