Mexican Muralism vs Posada's Calaveras

メキシコ壁画運動 / ポサダのカラベラ

Mexican Muralism comes from Mural Traditions and Posada's Calaveras from Popular Prints. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.

Mexican Muralism

Mexican Muralism — リベラ 国立宮殿壁画 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0Mexican Muralism — オロスコ カバニャス救貧院壁画 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainMexican Muralism — シケイロス ポリフォルム・クルトゥラル — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Paints post-revolutionary history, labor, indigenous culture and visions of the future onto the vast walls of public buildings.

Posada's Calaveras

Posada's Calaveras — ポサダ『ラ・カラベラ・カトリーナ』1910頃 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainPosada's Calaveras — 『ドン・キホーテのカラベラ』（米国議会図書館） — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainPosada's Calaveras — ホセ・グアダルーペ・ポサダ《出版人バネガス・アローヨのカラベラ》瓦版 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

The skeleton satires Posada engraved for Mexican broadsides: dressed-up calaveras laughing at class and death alike. La Catrina became a national icon of the Day of the Dead and Mexican graphics.

Mexican MuralismPosada's Calaveras
Era1920s–1940s1880s–1913
FamilyMural TraditionsPopular Prints
KindStyleStyle
CuesMonumental murals / Crowds of figures / Political narrative / Public spacePersonified skeletons / Rough zinc-etched lines / Sharing the sheet with broadside type / Satire that laughs at death
Best used forSchool and civic walls where local history must be read by people passing. · Exhibitions on labor or migration needing crowds of figures to show relationships.Satirical drawing that needles power and the news for papers and magazines · Festival announcements and goods that treat death as an occasion for laughter
TypeKeep lettering inside banners and flags, painted with the same brush as the image.Headlines set as broadside type, packed above and below the image
CompositionSet the subject high for an upward view, running the crowd as one wave.Crowds of skeletons ranged across, sorted by the hats and dress of rank
MaterialFresco on lime plaster with earth pigments, the wall texture left visible.Rough zinc-etched line printed black on coarse paper, trimmed close
CautionBorrowing crowds and raised fists without deciding whose history is told and for whom yields a large decorative wall with no argument.Using the skeleton as a merely spooky motif blunts the satire that laughed at class, and the result becomes indistinguishable from seasonal decoration.

Put these two together

Mural Traditions ／ Popular Prints

IndexStyle