Jose Guadalupe Posada and Religious Images

Posada is known best for the calavera images that he popularized but there is much more to Posada as a creative artist. Over and over again Posada demonstrates his prolific talent and genius with technique, perspective and compostion. Here we have an example of an acid etching (a technique that Posada developed at the Vanegas Arroyo printing house) of Nuestra Senora de los Remedios (pink paper). He would use a grease pencil to create lines on a zinc plate that he wanted to preserve in raised relief, then he would place the plate in an acid bath. The acid would etch the non-greased areas away and leave the raised lines that could then be inked to produce an image.