20 Essential Works by José Guadalupe Posada – Ranked
José Guadalupe Posada drew for a public that bought songs, crime stories, religious sheets, political verses and sensational news from printers and street vendors. Skeletons made him famous later, but they were only one part of a much larger working life in print. These twenty works move through that wider record.
Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos que se venera en el estado de Jalisco
Posada was born in Aguascalientes in 1852. He learned drawing there before entering the world of commercial printing, where religious images were as much a part of the job as satire or news.
Details & Sources
Published by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo in Mexico City in 1910.
Library of Congress ↗Lamentos que dirige un huérfano ya desvalido
As a teenager, Posada worked in the shop of printer and lithographer José Trinidad Pedroza. One of the early publications associated with that circle was the short-lived satirical paper El Jicote.
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Calaveras de confianza que les dará su pitanza
The skeletons in Posada’s prints were not one social class. Barbers, policemen, musicians, politicians and bullfighters could all end up as calaveras, usually with a short verse attached.
Details & Sources
The Library of Congress dates this broadside between 1890 and 1913.
Library of Congress ↗Woman Praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe as Her Husband Rages
Before moving to Mexico City, Posada spent years working in León. His shop there handled ordinary commercial printing as well as illustrations, a background that helps explain the range of subjects in his later work.
Details & Sources
The Met notes that the image appeared in the broadside Importantísimo Milagro.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗A News Story About an Apparition of a Spirit
By the late 1880s, Posada was working in Mexico City. The popular press there needed pictures for murders, miracles, ghosts, disasters and other stories that could catch a passer-by’s attention.
Details & Sources
The Met catalogues the work as Broadside relating to a news story about an apparition of a spirit, women sitting up in bed looking at a ghost.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗A News Story About a Volcanic Eruption
Natural disasters were news, and news needed pictures. The same printing network that distributed songs and jokes could also turn an eruption or flood into an inexpensive illustrated sheet.
Details & Sources
The Met catalogues the work as Broadside relating to a news story about the destruction following a volcanic eruption, volcano erupting while animals and men on horseback flee.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗Chaos During an Earthquake
This image was used in a November 1894 issue of Gaceta Callejera. Posada’s work for such sheets sits close to journalism: a compact picture made to carry the event quickly.
Details & Sources
The Met identifies the source as Gaceta Callejera, no. 20, dated 3 November 1894.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗Execution of Jesús Bruno Martínez
Crime reporting was another regular part of the popular print market. Executions, murders and trials were illustrated directly, often with none of the distance expected from later newspaper imagery.
Details & Sources
La calavera taurina ya llegó a todo correr
Bullfighting belonged to the same popular culture Posada drew from every day. The ring, performers, crowds and public reputations gave him material well beyond formal politics.
Details & Sources
The full Library of Congress title is La calavera taurina ya llegó a todo correr, gritando con mucha muina: que toreros van a ver.
Library of Congress ↗El purgatório artístico, en el que yacen las calaveras de los artistas y artesanos
Here artists and craftsmen carry the objects of their trades into the afterlife. Posada’s calaveras worked best when readers could recognise the profession or social type at a glance.
Details & Sources
The Library of Congress describes artists, musicians and other craftsmen as skeletons carrying objects connected with their professions.
Library of Congress ↗The Great Pantheon of Love
Death did not stop courtship in these sheets. Twelve small scenes turn jealousy, marriage, arguments and romance into separate jokes, each paired with a short verse.
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Skeletons Riding Bicycles
The bicycle boom in Mexico City offered an easy target. In this sheet the riders stand for newspapers, turning competition between publications into a literal race.
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Calaveras Zalameras de las Coquetas Meseras
The calaveras drink, dance and flirt like the living. That ordinary behaviour is part of the joke: death changes the bodies, but not the habits of the people being mocked.
Details & Sources
The Met notes that the principal image was also used in another broadside, Gran fandango y francachela.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗The Skeleton of the People’s Editor — Antonio Vanegas Arroyo
Antonio Vanegas Arroyo was central to Posada’s Mexico City career. His shop produced inexpensive sheets for a large public, and Posada supplied images for an extraordinary range of subjects.
Details & Sources
The figure is Vanegas Arroyo himself, surrounded by skeletons proofreading and operating the printing press.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗The Horrific Skeleton of the Flood of Guanajuato
A flood devastated Guanajuato in 1905. Posada’s sheet did not simply illustrate the disaster; it folded the dead into a set of comic fictional stories, mixing current events with the calavera form.
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Calaveras de caudillos de silla presidencial
Politics returned sharply during the final years of Posada’s life. This broadside treats presidential hopefuls as another crowd of calaveras competing for position while Mexico moved into revolution.
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Esta es de Don Quijote la primera, la sin par la gigante calavera
Don Quixote became a skeleton without losing his horse, lance or appetite for battle. The broadside packs several scenes onto one sheet, closer to a small printed spectacle than a single isolated cartoon.
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Calaveras del montón, número 1
A charro skeleton charges through a graveyard with a machete while new skeletons pile up around him. Posada’s calaveras could be violent, comic and crowded at the same time.
Details & Sources
The Library of Congress dates the broadside to 1910 and identifies Antonio Vanegas Arroyo as publisher.
Library of Congress ↗Gran Calavera Eléctrica
Electricity and streetcars were signs of a changing Mexico City. Posada turned that fascination with modern technology into a skeleton hypnotising skulls while an electric tram passes behind them.
Details & Sources
This is the 1907 broadside published by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, rather than the later printing also held by the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress ↗Calavera Garbancera — Later Known as La Catrina
The figure began as Posada’s Calavera Garbancera, shown as a skull in an elaborate hat. In his 1947 mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central, Diego Rivera gave her a full body and the form — and name — by which La Catrina is widely known today.
Details & Sources
Mexican cultural institutions identify Posada’s original figure as the Calavera Garbancera. Diego Rivera later gave the figure a full body in his 1947 mural and established the version widely known as La Catrina.
Secretaría de Cultura, Mexico ↗INAH ↗
Public-domain image record ↗
