The article profiles the life and work of José Guadalupe Posada, a prolific Mexican printmaker who died in relative obscurity in 1913. It details his career from his early work in lithography and political cartoons to his later, defining collaboration with publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo in Mexico City, where he produced sensationalist broadsides and his iconic calaveras (skeletons).
Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) was a sculptor, printmaker, feminist, and social activist whose art was inseparable from her life and politics. Born in Washington, DC, to parents who worked in education, she faced racial discrimination early on—denied a scholarship to the Carnegie Institute of Technology and paid less than white colleagues as a teacher. She became the first Black woman to earn an MFA from the University of Iowa, studying under Grant Wood, and later taught at the George Washington Carver School in Harlem, where she connected with Harlem Renaissance figures. Catlett moved to Mexico, married artist Francisco Mora, and created woodblock and linocut prints for 20 years. She was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, declared an "undesirable alien," and became a Mexican citizen in 1962. Her work centered on Black and Mexican women, and she famously stated, "We have to create an art for liberation and for life."
Eduardo Robledo, a Mexico City-based artist from Xochimilco, creates detailed linocuts that celebrate Mexican heritage, community, and spiritual motifs. His work features traditional symbols like skulls, skeletons, and Sacred Hearts alongside regional animals and cultural references such as Xochimilco's canal boats. Robledo also engages in social activism through printmaking, viewing it as a democratic medium for spreading messages about causes he supports. His prints are available at Hecho a Mano in Santa Fe, and he co-founded Lugar de Huida, a gallery in Mexico City that highlights Mexican printmakers.