Youtube ; Jose Posada
Jose Guadalupe Posada a printmaker
This is a short introduction to Mexico’s most famous print making artist Jose Guadalupe posada who lived and worked in Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Jose Posadas most active years as a successful printmaking artist coincided with a time of rising civil unrest called the Pofiriato when Mexico was under the dictatorship of the president Porfirio Diaz in 1876 to 1910 and the opening phase of the Mexican revolution that started in 1910 until posada's own death in January 1913. Posada made prints with lithograph and zinc and metal plates he produced prints for small posters called broadsides, almanacs, pamphlets and for many newspapers then Aguacalientes, Guanajuato, Leon and Mexico City. Posadas prints served as political cartoons helping to form public opinion at a time when many Mexicans were unable to read. Photography was still in its infancy in Mexico and Posada's prints helped newspapers deliver current events while photography was cost prohibitive and was rarely on the scene at the time while news unfolded. Posadas experienced a series of personal tragedies as well as the death of his beloved son in 1900, for solace from his personal tragedies Posada turned to his work becoming a prolific artist making over 20, 000 images in his lifetime. With a flair for the macabre Posada documented the daily life of ordinary Mexicans. He captured their fears, their crimes, their mistreatment by the Diaz regime he documented the now lost world of a pre-revolutionary Mexico that was on the verge of its own self- destruction.
Here is a man hung by the landlords for being a revolutionary on their hacienda. The era that Posada lived in was marked by extreme poverty and exploitation of Mexico’s campesinos and working classes by a few elites. Posada's personal political commentary as far as can be discerned from his prints would place him as against the corruption of the Diaz regime and one of the newspapers where his prints appeared helped to topple a local politician but the newspaper was later shut down by the Diaz government. He made political humor and of teasing of the excesses of the rich his prints also graced the pages of early intellectual revolutionaries for the likes of the Flores Magon brothers.
After the overthrow of Diaz, Posada seems to have sided with the new president Francisco I Madero. President Francisco I Madero was a moderate social reformer who was against the more radical revolutionaries who demanded real change such as Emilio Zapata and Posada's prints seemed to side with the new Madero administration. This was a common attitude in Mexico City at the beginning of the Mexican revolution as the Zapata's armies were often quite feared as hopeless barbarians threatening an otherwise civilized Mexico City.
Posada depicts Zapata’s army as skeletons only capable of bringing death Posada's imagery often contained skeletons and had a surreal dreamlike quality to it them that became burned into the collective memory of the survivors of Mexico’s civil war.
Posada died early in the revolution in January of 1913 from severe gastritis. After his death the Mexican revolution intensified and slowly claimed lives of millions of Mexicans completely altering Mexican society forever. Posada was all but forgotten but his artwork found admiration by Diego Rivera and many other Mexican artists in the 1930s and 1940s. Today he is one of the most revered Mexican artists of all time. His imagery is seen everywhere especially around the
day of the dead. Posada's life work is among the most essential of Mexican art.