CUSTOM WORKS

Mexican engraver and illustrator. Born into a peasant family in Aguascalientes, he was an apprentice lithographer at the print shop of Trinidad Pedrozo. His first illustrations were for Pedrozo's radical weekly El Jicote (The Wasp, 1871), but after 11 issues the magazine was closed down by the authorities and Posada was forced to flee with his employer to Leon in Guanajato. Here he taught and published lithographs, and in 1888 was able to set up his own print shop in Mexico City. He began to illustrate Antonio Vanegas Arroyo's broadsheets of sensational news stories (accidents, executions and natural disasters) and urban myths (women giving birth to animals or turning into fireballs). In 1895 he began to etch on zinc, which became his preferred rnedium. Despite a vast popularity; he died in poverty in Mexico City.

Posada was a model for the Mexican muralists as a popular artist producing vivid and simple images in a distinctively non-European mode with strong elements of political satire. He is best known for his calaveras, witty images of skeletons performing the rituals and pleasures of everyday life. Often dressed in bourgeois finery, they mock the pretensions and vanity of the living.