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For the gallery’s second exhibition, we have brought together a collection of objects emblematic of the new technical explorations of 20th-century artists.

Freed from its utilitarian constraints, printmaking returned to a purely artistic realm at the turn of the 20th century, allowing artists to explore new possibilities. As a noble artistic medium, it even became a substrate that artists reinterpreted by reworking it by hand.

The sudden emergence of photography fundamentally altered the artist’s relationship with representation. The framing of subjects modernized, and when used for documentary purposes, photography revealed the ongoing transformations of an artwork.

The first collages were created by Picasso and Braque in 1912. They inspired the Dadaists and Surrealists, who saw the medium as a subversive tool for reappropriation. Initially used to complement drawn motifs, collage subsequently became a way to expand the pictorial surface.

At the crossroads of all these technical innovations lies drawing paper. Offering far greater freedom than canvas, it enables the blending of genres and the most inventive manipulations. It is also the space for sketching and preparatory work—where the field of possibilities truly opens up.