Jose Guadalupe Posada, the Mexican political cartoonist and engraver, is most famous for his amusing and often satirical calaveras (skulls) and skeletons, so I was surprised when I ran across this emphatically pre-mortem Posada portrait of the famous revolutionary from Morelos State, Emiliano Zapata.
It's a lovely, poster-ready engraving which captures the great warrior's idealism and ferocity, while its images of bullet holes foreshadow Zapata's violent death by multiple gunshot wounds. Posada lived and died during the Mexican Revolution, so this must have been one of his later works. He had enjoyed some notoriety during his career, but died unknown and impoverished in 1913. Zapata survived another six years, eventually keeping his date with assassins' bullets at a carefully-laid ambush in 1919.
Click on the image for a larger view.
Etaoin Shrdlu
--30--
3 comments:
I seemed to have gotten a strange notion that it was your portrait when I saw it earlier. I hope you don't mind that too much--how my imagination got carried away.
Right now it's my "avatar" at BNet -- maybe that's why. I've always felt a strong affinity with Mr. Zapata.
--DB
I feel better now, seeing how you like him a lot.
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