Posada in front of his shop. Collection of Francisco Díaz de Léon family.

José Guadalupe Posada’s work is internationally recognized today. Yet, in his own time he was considered a mere artisan, a commercial illustrator producing images on short deadlines for the Mexican equivalent of the American or English penny press. After his death in 1913, he was largely forgotten (though his work continued to appear from time to time in the popular press whenever a publisher found it convenient to reuse his printing blocks). His work was rediscovered a decade later by Jean Charlot and the artists of the Mexican Renaissance, who recognized a predecessor in Posada and acknowledged him as "the artist of the Mexican people." Like the muralists of the 1920s-1940s, Posada worked in a narrative style that was intelligible to the great masses of Mexico’s people. From his viewpoint as a member of the urban, working class, Posada created a portrait of his life and times of great originality, force, and humor.

Little is known of Posada’s personal life. He was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, in 1852 and, in his youth, learned the art of lithography. By 1871 he was making satirical illustrations for a local paper, El Jicote (The Hornet). From there he moved to the town of León de las Aldamas (Guanajuato) in 1872, where he worked as an illustrator and commercial artist. His lithographs from that period are technically and compositionally sophisticated. In 1888, perhaps because of the cataclysmic spring flood that swept León that year, Posada left for Mexico City, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In the beginning, he went from publisher to publisher to sell his work. Often, he made a print on the spot: a quick illustration for some sensational bit of news or, perhaps a popular song – whatever was needed. After a few years, he joined the staff of Mexico's leading publisher of popular literature, Antonio Vanegas Arroyo. It was a fortuitous, mutually beneficial arrangement. The fame of both artist and publisher reside largely upon the body of work produced from this collaboration.

In Vanegas Arroyo’s shop, Posada worked alongside other illustrators, including Manuel Manilla. There, Posada radically transformed both his style and technique to meet the demands of the penny press and his new urban audience. He developed an expressive shorthand to produce rapid, legible, and appealing illustrations. At first, he worked exclusively in type-metal engraving, like Manilla. This was a relatively fast and cheap way to produce a relief block that could be printed at the same time as the text. The resulting prints have a rigid quality and appear as "white line" images on predominantly dark ground. While he continued to work in type-metal engraving, he also developed a rapid relief etching technique using an acid-resistant ink (similar to what William Blake had done in England a century earlier). This allowed Posada much greater freedom since he could draw on, rather than carve, the metal-faced printing block. The fluidity of his etched black line across the brightly colored papers favored by the Vanegas Arroyo firm is characteristic of many of Posada’s most expressive prints.

The penny press audience required a narrative pictorial style that could be understood even if the reader was illiterate. Accordingly, Posada depicted his subjects in a manner that appealed to the popular imagination. Many of the stories and songs that Posada illustrated were sensational or humorous. They might be compared to the subjects of today’s tabloid press: monsters and miracles, as well as disasters of every kind. The famous calaveras (comic skeletal figures in contemporary dress) were also done by Posada’s predecessor Manuel Manilla and evolve from a long tradition in European graphic imagery such as the medieval danse macabre and baroque memento mori of Hans Holbein.

The subjects of his broadsides, especially the popular ballads known as corridos, often recall the feats of legendary folk heroes. The lower classes who purchased these could enjoy a vicarious victory over the daily injustices and coercion of landowners and government officials who were so cavalierly flaunted by the tough and daring bandits or valientes celebrated in the verses. The broadsides, cheaply produced and hawked on the streets of Mexico City for pennies, were printed on brightly colored tissue or poor quality paper. These ephemeral fliers were never intended to last, let alone find their way into museums and libraries.

José Guadalupe Posada. Courtesy Jean Charlot Collection. University of Hawai’i at Manoa Library

The range of Vanegas Arroyo’s publications appears in advertisements on his booklets. They include: "This year's songs, collections of greetings, tricks, riddles, parlor games, booklets on cooking, sweets and and pastry making, toasts, humorous verses, patriotic speeches, children’s theater, and puppet plays. Posada illustrated entertaining stories such as The New oracle, The Book of the future, Rules for card games, The New Mexican prayerbook, Black and white magic, or The Book of sorcerers" with originality and verve.

José Guadalupe Posada. The A. Vanegas Arroyo Press. Courtesy Jean Charlot Collection. University of Hawai’i at Manoa Library

Was Posada, who died in 1913, a revolutionary? Not in a direct sense, perhaps. He did few illustrations related to the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20. Whatever his political persuasions, his death in 1913 ended his experience with this phase of Mexican history. The revolutionary status that artists of the Mexican Renaissance and the TGP have accorded Posada is related to the essentially Mexican nature of his art. Unlike the stylistically European imagery directed to elite classes prior to the Revolution, Posada’s penny press work was made by, for, and about the working classes of Mexico. It chronicled life from their point of view, in a language they could understand and appreciate.

It is difficult on the basis of so little personal information about the artist to construct an image of the man. One story has it that Posada took an unvaried annual holiday, during which he would retire with a vat of tequila and reappear only after it was emptied. We do know that Posada had little family at the end of his life and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Times change, and with it technology and sensibilities. Manual methods of illustration were replaced by photography in the early decades of the twentieth century. Some rare broadsheets produced by the Vanegas Arroyo firm combine the colored tissue format with photomechanical imagery. Jean Charlot also noted a change in audience sensibility: grown accustomed to the greater realism of photography by the time of the Mexican Revolution, people began to reject the "medieval symbolism" of Posada’s graphic interpretations.

Posada’s work has continued to receive accolades. Like the muralists, the printmakers of Mexico’s Taller de Gráfica Popular (1937-) consider Posada their direct antecedent and inspiration. Leopoldo Méndez depicted Posada making a print in his workshop as he observed the social and political strife on the streets outside his window.

Leopoldo Méndez. Portrait of Posada in his shop.

Another visual homage to Posada appears in Diego Rivera’s mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central (Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park), 1948, in which he included the printmaker and one of his famous creations, the Doña Catrina Calavera.

Posada’s imagery has appeared in everything from Chicano murals to rock music album covers and book jackets in recent years. In a paradoxical prophecy, Diego Rivera once said: "Posada was so great that perhaps one day his name will be forgotten." It is true that many people who are familiar with his dynamic and imaginative calaveras – even those who continue to use and modify his work – have never heard his name.

Posada’s was a life of hard work, relative poverty, and anonymity. Yet, within this context he created a body of work of incredible orginality and expressiveness, employing a remarkable economy of artistic and material means. As his calaveras remind us, death makes fools of us all. Rich and poor, proud and humble are placed on a level playing field. The closest we can come to immortality is the longevity of those who leave something universal behind, such as Posada.

– Stella de Sá Rego

Bibliography

ANTÜNEZ, Francisco. Primicias litográficas del grabador José Guadalupe Posada. Aguascalientes, 1962.

BERDECIO, Roberto and Stanley Appelbaum. Posada's Popular Mexican Prints. New York: Dover Publication, Inc., 1972.

CARRILLO A., Rafael. José Guadalupe Posada and His Work. [Mexico]: Panorama Editorial, S.A., 1980.

CHARLOT, Jean. Posada's Dance of Death. New York: Pratt Graphic Art Center, 1964.

FRANK, Patrick. Posada's Broadsheeets: Mexican Popular Imagery, 1890-1910. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

GAMBOA, Fernando. Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People . . . Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1944.

MAYOR, A. Hyatt. Popular Prints of the Americas. New York: Crown Publisher, Inc., [1973].

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. Splendors of Thirty Centuries. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Bulfinch Press, 1990.

MEXICAN FINE ARTS CENTER. José Guadalupe Posada Aguilar: Commemorating the 7th Anniversary of His Death. Chicago: Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1988.

TINKER, Edward Laroque. Corridos & Calaveras. With notes and translations by Americo Paredes. Austin: The University of Texas, 1961.

TOOR, Frances, Paul O'Higgins, and Blas Vanegas Arroyo. Mongrafía: las Obras de José Guadalupe Posada . . . Mexico City: Mexican Folkways, 1930.

TYLER, Ron (editor). Posada's Mexico. Washington: Library of Congress and Amon Carter Museum, 1979.

WESTHEIM, Paul, Justino Fernández, and José Julio Rodríguez. José Guadalupe Posada Carpeta con 24 grabados. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, n.d.