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Through the technique of collage, two-dimensional paper transformed itself into three-dimensional expression. Depending on colour, pattern or material, the paper surface appeared in the foreground or in the background, and the painting was transformed into a bas-relief. Picasso had experimented with this technique when he had cut up scraps of paper and used them to construct his guitar box sculptures.

Futurism in 1911 and 1912 incorporated the flat surface of the papiers collés with rhythmic repetitions and the associated dynamic structure in a state of simultaneity. Futurism created a dynamic relief of the world in a state of unrest. The processes did not develop sequentially, but rather in a concurrence of the past, present and future.

Carlo Carrà created the prototype of a two-dimensional futurist paper collage using paper and newspaper cut-outs. The Manifestazione Interventista appeared on the 1st of August, in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, in the newspaper Lacerba in Paris. Evoking an explosion, printed strips of paper animated by an extraordinary dynamism rotate out from the central point in all directions. For the Futurists, the collage for the first time became a document of the period, using scraps of newspaper, advertising and musical scores. As if liberated, words and letters unfurled to symbolise sounds and noises, tumbling with an overflow of simultaneous information into the painting.

A short time later, this Futurist combination of text and sound further developed in the Dada movement. Printed fragments of paper that had their own separate meanings were combined to reveal new interpretations and send new messages. In reciprocal interaction, even unrelated levels of reality obtained unexpected new meanings.

Using already existing visual materials, collage created new possibilities in the total mutation of the original meaning of the material. Collage in the 20th century, as a way of thinking, opened unknown paths and unexpected possibilities.