Gamboa, Fernando, 1909-1990

Fernando Gamboa was an art historian and director of the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. An early collector of Posada’s work, Gamboa contributed to several exhibits, including the important 1944 show held at the Art Institute of Chicago.

José Guadalupe Posada’s work is internationally recognized today. Yet, in his time he was considered a mere artisan, a commercial illustrator producing images on short deadlines for the Mexican equivalent of the American or English penny press. After his death in 1913, he was largely unknown. His work was rediscovered a decade later by Jean Charlot and the artists of the Mexican Renaissance, who recognized a predecessor in Posada and acknowledged him as "the artist of the Mexican people." Like the muralists of the 1920s-1940s, Posada worked in a narrative style that was intelligible to the great masses of Mexico’s people. From his viewpoint as a member of the urban, working class, Posada created a portrait of his life and times as one of great originality, force, and humor.

Little is known of Posada’s personal life. He was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, in 1852 and, in his youth, learned the art of lithography. By 1871, he was making satirical illustrations for a local paper, El Jicote (The Hornet). From there he moved to the town of León de las Aldamas (Guanajuato) in 1872, where he worked as an illustrator and commercial artist. His lithographs from that period are technically and compositionally sophisticated. In 1888, perhaps because of the cataclysmic spring flood that swept León that year, Posada left for Mexico City, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In the beginning, he went from publisher to publisher to sell his work. Often, he made a print on the spot: a quick illustration for some sensational bit of news or, perhaps a popular song - whatever was needed. After a few years, he joined the staff of Mexico's leading publisher of popular literature, Antonio Vanegas Arroyo. It was a fortuitous, mutually beneficial arrangement. The fame of both artistand publisher reside largely upon the body of work produced from this collaboration.

In Vanegas Arroyo’s shop, Posada worked alongside other illustrators, including Manuel Manilla. There, Posada radically transformed both his style and technique to meet the demands of the penny press and his new urban audience. He developed an expressive shorthand to produce rapid, legible, and appealing illustrations. At first, he worked exclusively in type-metal engraving, like Manilla. This was a relatively fast and cheap way to produce a relief block that could be printed at the same time as the text. The resulting prints have a rigid quality and appear as "white line" images on predominantly dark ground. While he continued to work in type-metal engraving, he also developed a rapid relief etching technique using an acid-resistant ink (similar to what William Blake had done in England a century earlier). This allowed Posada much greater freedom since he could draw on, rather than carve, the metal-faced printing block. The fluidity of his etched black line across the brightly colored papers favored by the Vanegas Arroyo firm is characteristic of many of Posada’s most expressive prints.

The subjects of his broadsides, especially the popular ballads known as corridos, often recall the feats of legendary folk heroes. The lower classes who purchased these could enjoy a vicarious victory over the daily injustices and coercion of landowners and government officials who were so cavalierly flaunted by the tough and daring bandits or valientes celebrated in the verses. The broadsides, cheaply produced and hawked on the streets of Mexico City for pennies, were printed on brightly colored tissue or poor quality paper. These ephemeral fliers were never intended to last, let alone find their way into museums and libraries.

Times change, and with it technology and sensibilities. Manual methods of illustration were replaced by photography in the early decades of the twentieth century. Some rare broadsheets produced by the Vanegas Arroyo firm combine the colored tissue format with photomechanical imagery. Jean Charlot noted a change in audience sensibility: grown accustomed to the greater realism of photography by the time of the Mexican Revolution, people began to reject the "medieval symbolism" of Posada’s graphic interpretations

Posada’s work has continued to receive accolades. Like the muralists, the printmakers of Mexico’s Taller de Gráfica Popular (1937-) consider Posada their direct antecedent and inspiration. Leopoldo Méndez depicted Posada making a print in his workshop as he observed the social and political strife on the streets outside his window.

Posada’s imagery has appeared in everything from Chicano murals to rock music album covers and book jackets in recent years. In a paradoxical prophecy, Diego Rivera once said: "Posada was so great that perhaps one day his name will be forgotten." It is true that many people who are familiar with his dynamic and imaginative calaveras – even those who continue to use and modify his work – have never heard his name.

Posada’s was a life of hard work, relative poverty, and anonymity. Yet, within this context he created a body of work of incredible orginality and expressiveness, employing a remarkable economy of artistic and material means. As his calaveras remind us, death makes fools of us all. Rich and poor, proud and humble are placed on a level playing field. The closest we can come to immortality is the longevity of those who leave something universal behind, such as Posada.

From the guide to the Fernando Gamboa Collection of Prints by José Guadalupe Posada, 1888-1944, (University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research)