"We tend to think of collage as a modern technique but there is nothing very new about the essential idea of bringing into association unrelated images and objects to form a different expressive identity. Building images in this way can be found in primitive as well as sophisticated cultures, but although highly developed collage technique can be traced back to tenth century Japan it has only re-emerged as a legitimate form of artistic expression in the first decade of this century with the advent of cubism and particularly the work of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Against a lucidly drawn historical background Eddie Wolfram re-evaluates the significance of collage in the major art movements of this century and in such diverse fields as theatre design, political propaganda, book binding and advertising, with beautifully illustrated examples of the major collages and assemblage works of each period. He traces the development of collage from Cubism to Futurism with the assemblage sculptures of Boccioni and the dynamic typomontages of Severini; from the Suprematist movement and the visual propaganda of the Russian Revolution to Dada and the coming of age of collage under Schwitters, the master of the medium; from the flowering of collage in surrealist painting, sculpture and photomontage with such masters as Ernst, Bellmer and Man Ray to its proliferation after the second world war in the work of such key movement figures as Rauschenberg and Warhol." -book jacket.