Five Schools, Built to Deepen · Posada — Broadsides & Calaveras
Gran Calavera Eléctrica — José Guadalupe Posada, c.1905
José Guadalupe Posada · Mexican broadside, 1905
What it is
Posada’s large group broadside "Gran Calavera Eléctrica" — a crowd of skeletons on bicycles and in the street, electric lighting worked into the joke.
Why it matters
Where the Catrina satirizes one figure’s vanity, this piece satirizes an entire modernizing society at once — a wider, busier composition than Posada’s single-figure calaveras.
What to notice
The composition is dense with incident — dozens of small scenes rather than one central figure.
Progress, and the same old ending, in one crowded frame.
Provenance
- School
- Posada — Broadsides & Calaveras (Various)
- Designer
- José Guadalupe Posada
- Format
- Broadside
- Poster published
- Mexican broadside, 1905
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-17. Commons dates this file only as "between 1900 and 1913" — 1905 used as a midpoint estimate; refine if a firmer date surfaces. A Commons Featured Picture.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
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