Mixed media artist have been around since the early times and Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque are considered the fathers of Cubism. Working separately with no communication between them, both artists created works that were similar. By breaking down art to dimensional points of reference, they worked with form and space rather than realistic images. In 1912 Picasso created his first true mixed media piece, "Still Life with Chair Caning." He pasted paper and oilcloth to canvas and combined them with painted areas.

As a growing variety of paint mediums have become more widely available in recent decades, the prevalence of artists working in mixed media has continued to expand. According to Sean Dye, author of "The Mixed Media Sourcebook," mixed media techniques have been in use for centuries. For its sheer diversity, mixed media painting is an art form that holds many interesting possibilities.

Beginning in 1912, Picasso applied mixed media techniques to dimensional sculpture. The "Glass of Absinthe" done in 1914 is a vertical piece with many disparate objects assembled together, while "Still Life" involved gluing scraps of wood and a piece of upholstery fringe together and painting them. More realistic is his 1923 piece "The Lovers" which was done using ink, watercolor paints and charcoal on paper. Braque's "Fruit Dish" (1912) is identified by Greenberg as one of the first true mixed media paintings, and Picasso's "Guitar" (1913) is an early collage that had major implications for the future of art in the 20th century.

Over the course of modern art history, there have been a number of different professional artists who have worked in the realm of mixed media and who have created intelligent and stimulating pieces. The following are just a few of the famous mixed media artists.

As a mixed media artist Barr Lewis is unconfined to any particular technique or medium. Each time she employs a new medium she plays with it; exploring and probing its qualities and limitations. Once familiar with the new medium she then takes it to a new height by combining it with other media. The possibilities are never ending, that is her excitement. Always though, there is color and strength. Nadia Iliffe is a mixed media artist who lives in London in the United Kingdom. She takes commissions to make new recycled artwork or even to reproduce a piece she's already made in order to give it to a museum or corporation.

Mixed media artist allows someone to incorporate numerous techniques and items on fabric and create a declaration that is definitely bold with no qualifier required. It’s quite common because it does not have limits and that in itself is very liberating to the originator of this sort of unusual works. Mixed media isn’t a 20th-century trend, though in previous centuries designers were less experimental in the things they used. As an example, gold leaf was often combined with church work; Leonardo da Vinci mixed pastels with various other drawing media; William Blake utilized watercolor washes to his prints; Edgar Degas combined pastels with charcoal and printing inks.