La Calavera Catrina
La Calavera de la Catrina is a 1913 zinc etching by the deceased printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. The image has since become a staple of Mexican imagery, and is often incorporated into artistic manifestations of the Day of the Dead such as altars and calavera costumes. It was part of his series of calaveras, which were humorous images of contemporary figures depicted as skeletons, often accompanied by a poem.
The word "catrina" is the feminine form of the word "catrín", which means "dandy". The figure, depicted in an ornate hat fashionable at the time, is intended to show that the rich and fashionable, despite their pretensions to importance, are just as susceptible to death as anyone else.
La Catrina, as it is commonly known, was a popular print in Posada's day, but soon faded from the popular memory. It, like the rest of Posada's prints, was revived by a French artist and art historian Jean Charlot shortly after the Mexican Revolution. La Catrina soon gained iconic status as a symbol of a uniquely Mexican art, and was reproduced en masse. The image was incorporated into Diego Rivera's mural Dream of a Sunday in Alameda Park, which also includes images of Posada, Rivera himself, and his wife Frida Kahlo. In addition to its use as a holiday symbol for the Day of the Dead, it has also been reinterpreted in numerous forms, including sculpture.
La Catrina is also the name of a series of Spanish-language instructional videos. The story concerns Jaime Gonzalez, an American teenager who embarks on a foreign exchange student program to Mexico and learns about the Spanish language and Mexican culture.
Works
- Posada's Popular Mexican Prints (1972) Reference
References
- Miliotes, Diane. Jose Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican Broadside (Art Institute of Chicago).