Collage Art: Many Artworks in One

Collage art emerged in the early 20th century in Cubist circles. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque pioneered this method in the context of their Cubist expirements. It was an early form of cutting and pasting: "papiers collés", or paper cut-outs, opened up new possibilities for them, providing a technique with which to resist the two dimensionality that threatened to subsume the spirit of cubist painting.

Aside from Cubism, collage art is perhaps most associated in the first half of the twentieth century with works by Dada artists like Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters. Collage flowed seamlessly into their indefatigable expirementation with artistic form and purpose. Other contributors in Europe included Henri Matisse, whose famous cut-outs are almost synonymous with some of the great currents of modern art. Surrealist artists, including Eileen Agar, also made use of collage techniques.

In the United States, postwar artists, first in New York, were inspired by European collage practices. The torch was soon taken over by the incipient Pop Art movement. Especially with pop art, collage came into its own as a quintissentially American art form: ecclectic to its core, and foreswearing any obvious attempt at authenticity.

Staging Collage Art in Your Home

As part of a home decor concept, collage is a tricky matter. It does not have the obvious effects one can count on from works with a single motif or a single color scheme, much less a single working medium.

A collage artwork requires careful selection and planning, and an honest evaluation of your interior space. A truly open space with muted color can accommodate most any kind of artwork. In that case, you would arrange it as the statement piece. For a darker, more cloistered, or already "inhabited" wallspace, the motif itself, and its energy and color, should accommodate the room, and harmonize with the space and everything in it.

How to Make Your Own Fine Art Collage

With our hanging tips, you can explore ways to combine separate artworks into one pictorial narrative. Align multi-piece-artworks like a tetraptych by Jenny Okun, or create your own alignment in order to narrate a story on your wall. Create a metaphorical collage by combining works in different genres, mediums, or shapes in a single hanging arrangement. Turn your finished artworks into a collage all your own!