Welcome to the world of collage!

What exactly is collage? The first examples of collage art were made over 100 years ago, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, at the height of their artistic work, burst into completely new territory with their avant-garde papiers collés. 

The story goes that Braque was wandering past a wallpaper store, and spots some wood-grain wallpaper. He immediately goes to buy it and back in the studio, he starts pasting rectangular patches onto the surfaces of several large charcoal drawings. The drawings and the paper intersect and interact in a way that will bring a totally new direction to the art of both Braque and Picasso. 

Cutting, ripping, pasting, overlaying different textures and materials, the two artists started examining and dissecting objects and life in a radically new way. 

Since then, collage artists from countless different movements, from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, have been exploring the technique. 

Contemporary artists continue to work with the medium in ways that offer us new notions of what it can be and how it reflects the world around us.