Assemblage originally became a term with special meaning in the visual arts, denoting a type of artwork: Collages with plastic objects attached to a base plate. This creates works of art with a relief-like surface. Three-dimensional objects can also be called assemblages. The term is also used as an analogy in other fields, for example in postmodern philosophy.
In painting, the principle of assemblage was already anticipated in the 16th century by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who arranged flowers, fruits or vegetables, but also inorganic objects such as books into surprising portraits or still lifes in his paintings. An early form of assemblage is the technique of trencadís, popular in Modernist architecture (Art Nouveau in Catalonia), in which large fragments of ceramic tiles, marble or shards of crockery and bottles are formed into mostly abstract motifs.