collage

Collage is an artistic technique that creates a new image by assembling diverse elements—such as cut paper, photographs, fabric, and found objects—onto a flat surface. The elements are attached with glue or paste, and the arrangement emphasizes juxtaposition and texture. Although traditionally two-dimensional, collage can also extend into three dimensions through assemblage and mixed-media practices. Today, collage encompasses both manual cut-and-paste methods and digital combinations created with image-editing software.

Collage originated in the early 20th century, notably with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1912, who pasted fragments of newspaper and wallpaper into their paintings. The technique’s name is linked to Braque. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dada and Surrealist artists expanded collage into photomontage. Later artists, including Kurt Schwitters, Romare Bearden, and Robert Rauschenberg, integrated collage into painting, sculpture, and installation, helping to normalize collage as a versatile art form.

Common materials include paper, photographs, fabric, wallpaper, tickets, and other ephemera, arranged on paper, canvas, or board. Tools include scissors, craft knives, glue or gel medium, and sometimes varnish. Digital collage uses image-editing software to blend layers, crop imagery, and recontextualize found material, often printing the result for display or presenting it digitally.

Collage remains central in fine art, graphic design, and education. It enables rapid idea assembly, recontextualization of cultural material, and cross-media experimentation, with continued relevance in contemporary art and media.