From the Track of This Famous Hippodrome, Not a Single Journalist Will Be Missing. Inexorable Death Has No Respect, Not Even for Those You See Here Riding Bicycles.

1895·Relief engraving or photo-relief etching (engraving style) in black on tan wove paper·60.1 × 40.5 cm (23 11/16 × 16 in.)

The mainstream press was also a target in Posada’s day. This satirical broadside shows bicycle-riding calaveras representing various newspapers who compete in a headlong race. Comically and symbolically attired, the competitors include the Roman Catholic daily El Tiempo, who wears a mitre and appears as Father Time, and El Partido Liberal, who wears a Phrygian cap. Español: La prensa dominante fue también objeto de duras críticas durante la época de Posada. Esta satírica hoja volante muestra a un grupo de calaveras en bicicletas. Cada una representa a un periódico particular compitiendo desesperadamente en una apurada carrera. Ataviados con vestimentas cómicas y simbólicas, entre los competidores se encuentran el diario católico El Tiempo, que luce una mitra y cuya imagen remite a la figura del mítico padre del tiempo Cronos, y El Partido Liberal, que porta un gorro frigio.

Catalogue

Year: 1895
Medium: Relief engraving or photo-relief etching (engraving style) in black on tan wove paper
Dimensions: 60.1 × 40.5 cm (23 11/16 × 16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: José Guadalupe Posada

Artist

José Guadalupe Posada

Printmaking

José Guadalupe Posada was a Mexican printmaker and illustrator whose satirical engravings and lithographs became the visual language of Mexican popular culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Working primarily in zinc etching and relief printing, he produced thousands of broadsheets, handbills, and book illustrations that merged political commentary with skeletal imagery, most memorably the calaveras that would later define Día de Muertos visual tradition. His prolific output served the Mexican working class and political movements, circulating images of social critique and vernacular wit through affordable prints distributed in markets and streets. Posada's formal inventiveness with line, pattern, and grotesque figuration established visual conventions that would influence Mexican modernism and printmaking internationally.

Aguascalientes, Mexico

Full artist profile →