The word, collage, comes from the French word for pasting. It is an art technique that consists of cutting and pasting natural or man-made materials onto a painted or unpainted surface. A work of art made using this technique is called a collage.
Historically, the first collage was done by Picasso in 1912, when he pasted a section of commercially printed oilcloth onto his cubist painting entitled, “Still Life with Chair Caning”.
"Still Life with Chair Caning"
Other artists who have employed this technique are Braque, Dove, Gris, Malevich and other futurist artists.
These days, when most people hear the word collage, they using think of a photo collage. This is simply a collection of smaller photos included to make one big photo.
Crafty persons probably think of a collage as taking bits of material or photos or snippets from a magazine or newspaper, and pasting them on something. When I was younger, I used to make collages by using these items, and burning around the edges with a match, then pasting them to a nice board. Then I would coat it with polyurethane and put a hanger on the back.
These days, I more often make a hybrid photo collage, in that I use a photo, then put bits of material on it. This is called using “mixed media” these days.
Whatever you want to call it, or however you wish to do it, collage can make some great works of art.
