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art history

What Is Collage Art? Definition, Materials, and History

Collage art turns paper, photographs, fabric, and other found materials into new compositions. Learn how it works, how it developed, and how it differs from related forms.

By ThatPainter Team 3 min read
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Collage art is made by selecting fragments of paper or other materials, arranging them into a new composition, and attaching them to a support. It can use photographs, fabric, printed matter, and found objects, and may combine these with painting, drawing, or dimensional elements. The word comes from the French coller, meaning “to glue.”

How collage works

Collage is both a way of making art and the artwork that results. Its basic action is to bring existing materials together in a new arrangement on a support. The pieces might be glued, fastened, or otherwise affixed; paper is common, but it is not a requirement. The finished work may be flat or include raised, three-dimensional parts.

Because its components come from elsewhere, collage can bring more than color and texture into a picture. A photograph, newspaper clipping, ticket, or piece of wallpaper may retain recognizable text, imagery, or associations from its original use. Artists can work with those associations, alter them, or set fragments beside one another to create a new meaning.

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Materials and ways of working

Common collage materials include paper, photographs, fabric, and ephemera—small, often printed items such as tickets or other keepsakes. Artists may also incorporate found objects, paint, drawing, or other media. Tate’s examples include both two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements; the National Galleries of Scotland likewise describes found materials combined with drawn or painted marks.

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That variety means “collage” does not specify one look or method. A work may be an almost entirely flat arrangement of pasted papers, or a more layered construction with objects projecting from its support. A Metropolitan Museum collection record, for example, describes a Joan Miró work made with sandpaper, gouache, mirror, and thread in a wood box.

How collage differs from related terms

Term Emphasis How it relates to collage
Papier collé Pasted paper arranged on a support, often a flat surface. A specific paper-based approach; the French phrase means “pasted paper.”
Photomontage Photographs. Tate defines it as a collage constructed from photographs.
Assemblage Disparate elements, often scavenged everyday objects. Often more dimensional than a flat collage, though the practices can overlap.
Montage Images assembled in relation to one another to create a single work. A related term, but not interchangeable with collage in every context.

These labels describe different emphases rather than perfectly sealed categories. When a distinction matters, describe the actual material and construction: for example, a flat composition of photographs or a box-like work assembled from objects.

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When collage became a modern art technique

Joining materials to make an image existed in various forms for centuries. The modern history of collage is closely associated with Cubism in the early twentieth century. The Museum of Modern Art dates Georges Braque’s experiments with papier collé—including newspaper, wallpaper, and other papers—to 1912. Picasso and Braque used pasted materials as part of the shift toward Synthetic Cubism, challenging the expectation that a picture should represent a subject from one consistent viewpoint.

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Artists in later movements adapted collage to different ends. A 1948 MoMA exhibition release described it as a modern-art force that had spread through Cubism, Dada, Constructivism, and Surrealism. In the release’s account, Dada artists used collage and montage in protest, while Surrealists used them to evoke spontaneous, subconscious imagery. Collage can also serve formal, poetic, personal, or popular-cultural purposes; it does not necessarily carry a political message.

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Its history continued through artists who found distinct possibilities in the method: Max Ernst explored found images and rubbings; Kurt Schwitters made Merz works from discarded everyday materials; Henri Matisse created cut-paper compositions; and Joseph Cornell constructed shadow boxes. British Pop artists including Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and Peter Blake used popular imagery, while Robert Rauschenberg combined collage with silkscreen. Contemporary artists such as Tony Swain and John Stezaker continue to work with collage.

Who invented collage?

There is no single inventor of collage as a general practice: material-assembly techniques predate the modern art term. For the modern technique, the clearest historical landmark in these institutional accounts is Braque’s 1912 papier collé experimentation, situated within the broader work of Cubist artists including Picasso. It is more accurate to describe collage as a technique made distinctive in modern art by multiple artists than to credit Picasso alone.

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Trying a simple paper collage

For a basic project, gather a firm support, paper or clean found materials, something to cut or tear them with, and an adhesive suited to the materials. Arrange the pieces before attaching them; you can also leave room for drawing or paint. These are practical starting points, not a universal recipe: the appropriate adhesive and support depend on what the work contains. Found paper can be used instead of buying a kit.

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