A collage (From the French term Coller, meaning ‘to glue’) is an artistic composition of materials and objects which are typically glued to a surface to create a new image. Collages can include scraps of printed or painted paper, text, paint and a multitude of other manmade and natural items including wood, stone, glass or plastics. Completed collages usually follow a unifying theme although they can also be a mixture of completely unrelated subjects or have no real subject at all. The use of collage can be traced back hundreds of years however many argue that it did not emerge as a distinctive art form until the twentieth century, alongside modern art and the work of artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
The work shown is called ‘Le Petit Dejeuner’ by Juan Gris and features bits of printed paper alongside oil paint and gouache.
