The evolution of a technique that was first conceived as a challenge to painting, through some 100 works of more than 60 international artists.
Collage, a technique only apparently simple and fragile, has become an expressive medium carrying different meanings. Essays by Federica Rovati, Alessandro Nigro, Flavio Fergonzi and Maria Grazia Messina analyse some of its features: the technique, the subversions realized by Dada and Surrealism, the uses made by the Avant-gardes and after World War II. The works presented are divided in four thematic sections: two diachronic parts (from 1910 to 1960, the first experimentations by Picasso, Braque and Gris, the Futurist revival and Rauschenberg proposals, the puns, the associations of Soffici and Severini, the political contents of Dix and Grosz, the décollages by Rotella); one part dedicated to Surrealism (from Ernst to Miró) and the creation of a disorienting effect; another one focusing on the materials used by Prampolini, Burri, Novelli, Tancredi, Afro, Scialoja, e Motherwell; the last analysing the analogies and difference between collage and painting.