Cutting edges

Whether splicing images and text in a newspaper’s art department or layering cut-outs in Photoshop, collage has long been an integral part of graphic design.

Influenced by Surrealism and Dadaism, the form really took off in the art world in the 1920s and 1930s, when artists such as John Heartfield, El Lissitzky, and Hannah Höch championed the technique.

But with the development of digital montage technology and a explosion of nostalgic graphics harking back to the 1950s and earlier, collage is experiencing a second heydey, something which New book Cutting Edges aims to catalogue.

‘Although the artists also use the computer for the purpose of montage, most of the featured collages are made by hand and often include found objects. It is not only the addition of visual elements that is important to the work, but also their deliberate omission, deletion, and destruction,’ says Cutting Edges publishers.

Cutting Edges, Contemporary Collage byR. Klanten, H. Hellige, J. Gallagher is published by Gestalten.