The most popular museum in Aguascalientes
- Details
- Published on Friday, 19 July 2013 14:01
- Written by John Pint
La Catrina, the grinning skeleton with the elegant, floppy chapeau, is, without a doubt, the most famous creation of Mexican cartoonist, illustrator, artist and satirist José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913), whose work was so prolific that even today no one knows exactly how many obras he produced. But if you’d like an overview of his work – and at the same time an insight into life in Mexico during the tumultuous days of the Revolution – the place to visit is the Posada Museum in Aguascalientes.
Posada, who was born in the city of Aguascalientes, first did his engravings on wood and in 1895 introduced the technique of etching on blocks of zinc. Mostly he did cartoons which were accompanied by verses or popular news items. The papers he worked for were penny publications, the precursors of today’s supermarket tabloids, and he illustrated countless tales of murder and mayhem as well as graphic reports of catastrophes and dire predictions of cataclysms.