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Early Mixed Media Artists

The word mixed media represents an artwork made out of multiple material. The most popular use of mixed media was a major trend in the development of art in the 20th century. The most common is collage. The art critic Clement Greenberg suggested that collage, a form of mixed media in which different items are put together into a single composition, was one of the most important steps in the advancement of modern art. Greenberg places the origin of collage in the work of Pablo Picasso as well as Georges Braque in the years between 1911 and 1913. Braque’s “Fruit Dish” (1912) is recognized by Greenberg as among the 1st real mixed media paintings, and Picasso’s “Guitar” (1913) is actually an early collage which had important ramifications for the future of art in the twentieth century.

The earliest mixed media artists, although they weren’t referred to as mixed media artists, artists of the Byzantine Empire, 330 to 1453 A.D., frequently used gilded gold leaf on their paintings, mosaics, frescoes and manuscripts. The arts declined in the Dark Ages, however blossomed with the coming of the Renaissance. In addition to working with tempera, a paint medium that dates to ancient Egypt, oil painting became popular. A lot of artists applied gold leaf to painted wood panels to accomplish vibrant skies or shining halos on religious panels.

The Cubist art movement started out in Europe in the early years of the twentieth century. It broke from hundreds of years of conventional painting by depicting things as three-dimensional images that may be painted from a number of perspectives. Space was no longer restricted to the flat canvas; by using an analytical system, artists can fragment and redefine viewpoints.

Pablo Picasso along with Georges Braque are considered the fathers of Cubism. Although they were working individually without any communication between them, both artists created works that were similar. By breaking down art to dimensional points of reference, they worked with space and form instead of realistic images. In 1912, Picasso created his first real mixed media piece, “Still Life with Chair Caning.” He pasted papers and also oilcloth to canvas and merged them with painted areas. From 1912, Picasso employed mixed media techniques to dimensional sculpture. The “Glass of Absinthe” made in 1914 is a vertical piece with a lot of disparate things constructed together, while “Still Life” involved sticking leftovers of wood plus a piece of upholstery fringe together and also painting them. A lot more realistic is his 1923 piece “The Lovers” which was completed using ink, watercolour paints as well as charcoal on paper.

Mixed media art these days can be traced from sketching starting the work of early artists. Mixed media has become an available art form for both professional and amateur artists. Assemblage and collage can be found mixed with acrylic and watercolour painting, rubber-stamped art, sculpture and also altered books. Fibers, ripped papers, inks, glitters as well as beads are finding their way into works of fine art and commercial pieces such as greeting cards and even quilts. The way forward for mixed media, it seems, is limited only by the creative thinking of artists and whatever they can get their hands on.