José Guadalupe Posada
1852–1913 · 14 works
José Guadalupe Posada made images for a broad reading public through inexpensive printed sheets. News, songs, popular stories, disasters, and political life supplied material for his designs. His animated skeletons, or calaveras, give human habits a comic and sometimes pointedly critical form, although his output extended well beyond them. The images were made to work beside words and to catch the eye quickly. Looking at an entire sheet, rather than isolating its central figure, helps reveal the encounter between picture, headline, and popular storytelling that gave these prints their force.
14 works · 1894–1911
Compare the skeletons’ gestures across several prints. What activity or social role remains recognizable even after the body has become bones?
Manuel Manilla
Glorious Success of Ponciano Díaz and His Brave Charros in the Bull Rings of Madrid, 1889
