Background
Jose Posada was born on February 2, 1852 in Aguascalientes, Mexico. He was the son of German Posada Serna and Petra Aguilar Portillo.
artist engraver illustrator printmaker
Jose Posada was born on February 2, 1852 in Aguascalientes, Mexico. He was the son of German Posada Serna and Petra Aguilar Portillo.
As a child, Jose studied reading, writing and drawing under the tutelage of his older brother Cirilo, who was a country school teacher. Some time later, he attended the Municipal Drawing Academy of Aguascalientes.
He also learned lithography and engraving from Trinidad Pedroso.
Jose began his career as an artist, making drawings and copying religious images. In 1872, he dedicated himself to commercial lithography, settling down in Leon, Guanajuato. There, he also opened his own workshop and in 1883, the artist started to work as a teacher of lithography at the School of Secondary education, continuing his work with lithographs and wood engravings.
During the period from 1875 to 1888, the artist contributed his works to several newspapers, including La Gacetilla, el Pueblo Caótico and La education. In 1888, he joined the publishing house of Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, where he worked as an illustrator and engraver. There, Jose met Manuel Alfonso Manilla, and until 1899, the two men shared engraving duties.
From the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 until his death in 1913, Posada worked tirelessly in the press. The works he completed during that time allowed him to develop his artistic prowess as a draftsman, engraver and lithographer. At that time, Jose also continued to make satirical illustrations and cartoons, featured in the magazine El Jicote.
Jose Guadalupe Posada was best known for his animated skeletons (calaveras). "La Calavera Catrina" is his most famous work.
Major collections of his works are kept at numerous institutions and museums, including the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico, the Biblioteca de Mexico, the National Library of Anthropology and History and the Municipal Archive of the city of Leon and others.
Grito
La gloriosa campaña de madero
Bikes
Drainage Calavera. Those who retired exactly on the Day of the Dead due to the drainage
The calavera of popular editor Antonio Vanegas Arroyo
Calaveras from the heap
This is Don Quixote the first, the giant calavera without equal
Calavera from Oaxaca
La Calavera Catrina
From this famous hippodrome on the racetrack, not even a single journalist is missing. Death is inexorable and doesn’t even respect those that you see here on bicycle
Gran calavera eléctrica
Cortés
Because of the end of the world everyone will certainly now become calaveras; farewell to all the living, this is for real
Los 41 maricones
Don Quijote
The Bullfighter of Seville
La gartijo
Corrido de los cuatro zapatistas fusilados
The artistic purgatory, where the calaveras of artists and craftsmen lie
Coyotes (conmen) and waitress calavera
Calavera de la adelita
Calavera de intervencion
Los siete vicios
The calavera of the morbid cholera
Posada married Maria de Jesus Vela in 1875.
