José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913) was an illustrator, designer, and master printmaker who worked in relative obscurity in Mexico City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He produced thousands of type metal engraved images for the loose leaf broadsheets that could be purchased on the streets for a few centavos. At the heart of each “penny sheet” was an actual event about a bandit, a murderer, an execution, a shady politician, or a natural disaster, but the broadsheets did not disseminate news in the traditional sense. They consisted of illustrations, poems, and announcements that luridly mimed the news of the day and often satirized the political status quo.

Posada’s work was posthumously discovered by several of the Mexican muralists, including Diego Rivera, the French artist Jean Charlot, painter and critic Dr. Atl, the filmmaker S.M. Eisenstein, and Surrealist André Breton. He is one of the most important graphic artists of modern Mexico and a major figure in Mexican art history.