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INVENTORY OF THE JOSÉ GUADALUPE POSADA PRINTS,
1880-1943
960060
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Title: José Guadalupe Posada prints
Dates: 1880-1943
Collection number: 960060
Creator:
Posada, José Guadalupe, 1852-1913
Extent:
ca. 6 linear feet.
(375
prints)
Repository:
Getty Research Institute
Research Library
Special Collections and Visual Resources
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688
Abstract: A largely self-taught artist who produced more than 20,000 prints, his most well-known pieces for the publisher Antonio Vanegas
Arroyo in Mexico City. Most were illustrated broadsides on brightly colored paper and sold by strolling vendors throughout
Mexico. Posada influenced the 20th-century Mexican muralists, for whom he was the quintessentially Mexican populist artist.
Collection includes newspapers, chapbooks, half-sheet and full-sheet broadsides, all of which are illustrated with Posada's
prints.
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Language: Collection material in Spanish
Open for use by qualified researchers.
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Library Rights and Reproductions
José Guadalupe Posada prints, 1880-1943, Getty Research
Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 960060.
The Posada prints were acquired in five separate purchases. The first acquisition, October 1996, was assigned accession number
960060. Prints were subsequently acquired in October 1996 (960083), November 1996 (960085), February 1998 (P980002) and March
1998 (P970005, previously 970004).
In August
1998 5 separate acquisitions were integrated into a single collection. under the accession number
960060. Alma Dizon did the preliminary cataloging and processing in Spring
1998. Annette Leddy completed it and wrote the finding aid in August 1998.
José Guadalupe Posada was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico in
1852 and died in Mexico City in 1913. His life span thus encompasses the last
half century of the Mexican struggle for independence from colonial powers and
the establishment of a liberal government that would sign a democratic
Constitution in 1917. It is frequently observed that Posada's work expresses
the hopes and fears of the Mexican people during this time of social upheaval,
and that Posada's work, prolific, widely disseminated and extremely popular,
helped to educate a largely non-literate population about the urgent political
issues of the day.
To a great extent a self-taught artist, Posada apprenticed, when he
was not quite twenty years old, in the lithographic printing shop of Trinidad
Pedrozo in Aguascalientes, where he illustrated the independent newspaper
El Jicote. Forced to leave Aguascalientes for political
reasons, Pedrozo and Posada went to León, where in 1876 Posada was put
in charge of the printmaking shop and in 1884 given a position teaching
lithography at a secondary school.
In 1888 Posada moved to Mexico City, where he worked for various
newspapers, including
La Patria Ilustrada. In 1890, Posada joined the staff of
Antonio Vanegas Arroyo's publishing house, a position he would hold for the
rest of his life. Before moving to Mexico City, Posada had produced woodcuts or
lithographs, but now he began engraving on type metal and, after 1900, turned
to relief etching on zinc. Working for Arroyo and other publishers as well,
Posada produced prints for newspapers, broadsides, and chapbooks on a wide
range of topics, including fortune-telling, pet care, love, crime, miracles,
and politics. Most of these were printed on brightly colored paper and sold by
strolling vendors throughout the country. It is estimated that in his forty
year career, Posada produced over 20,000 engravings.
When they were very young, Diego Rivera and José Clemente
Orozco visited Posada in his workshop and deeply admired him. Later Posada
served as a model for the Mexican muralists and other artists, who emulated his
use of an indigenous Mexican style, commitment to a populist art form, and
explicit political content. In 1920, Jean Charlot, a French artist
collaborating on a mural with Rivera, was intrigued by the broadsides sold on
the streets that still bore Posada's prints. He was the first to publish
articles about Posada's work, theorizing its relevance for Mexican modernists.
Since then, a quantity of critical writings have proclaimed Posada Mexico's
greatest printmaker.
Scope and Content of Collection
There are 375 items in the collection, dating from 1888, the year
Posada moved to Mexico City, until 1923, ten years after his death, during
which period the prints were reissued in various contexts. There are two sets
of prints done much later, as commemorative collections, one of which was
published in 1943.
While the collection includes newspapers and chapbooks, the greatest
portion of material consists of the half sheet and full sheet broadsides. These
broadside prints cover the full range of topics Posada illustrated, from freaks
of nature, to firing squads to lives of saints. Among these, thirty-three
feature Posada's most famous character, the Calaveras, and fifteen feature Don
Chepito. There are also five games.
Most of the material was produced for the A. Vanegas Arroyo publishing
house, but there are also issues of the newspaper
La Patria Ilustrada, edited by Ireneo Paz, and a chapbook
series,
Biblioteca del niño mexicano, published by the
Maucci brothers. The collection contains no prints Posada made while working in
Aguascalientes or León.
Note: cetain items encompass two series, i.e., broadside and newspaper.
Arrangement
The prints are organized by format, and within that, arranged in
rough chronological order. Many prints are not dated.
The collection is organized in four series:
Series
I. Newspapers, 1880-1906
Series
II. Chapbooks, ca. 1890-1923
Series
III. Half sheet broadsides, ca. 1899-1943
Series
IV. Full sheet broadsides, ca. 1892-ca. 1919
Berdecio, Roberto and Stanley Appelbaum,
Posada's Popular Mexican Prints, New York,
1972.
Gamboa, Fernando and Carl O. Schniewind and Hugh L. Edwards,
Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People, Chicago,
1944.
Museo Nacional de Arte,
Posada y la prensa ilustrada: signos de modernización y
resistencias
, Mexico, 1996.
Rivera, Diego and Fernando Gamboa and Jean Charlot,
Life and Work of the Engraver José Guadalupe
Posada
, Mexico, 1958.
Tyler, Ron,
Posada's Mexico, Washington, 1979.