CHICAGO.- The Art Institute of Chicago presents the exhibit José Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican Broadside on view through January 17, 2007. Two consecutive installations focus attention on the Art Institute's outstanding but rarely exhibited collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century Mexican broadsides. Popular press publishers and itinerant hawkers sold these colorful, graphically powerful sheets on the street as penny handbills.

Made by renowned broadside illustrator Jose Guadalupe Posada, his colleague Manuel Manilla, and various anonymous artists, the 75 featured works cover a wide range of themes and aesthetic strategies. One can see scandal sheets covering the latest crimes and curiosities; news of dramatic and noteworthy events from natural disasters to military campaigns to national celebrations; popular song sheets introducing the latest compositions and corridos, narrative songs the tell of the escapades of bandits and heroes; and sheets marking Day of the Dead celebrations that feature the often humorous and satirical calaveras, or skeleton figures.

Jose Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican Broadside also explores the technical aspects of broadside production and examines its popular precursors. Posada was born in Aguascalientes on February 2, 1852. His early education was supervised by his brother, Cirilo, a country schoolteacher, who taught him drawing as well as reading and writing. As a young man he went to work in the taller (workshop) of Trinidad Pedroso, who taught him lithography and engraving. Before he was out of his teens Posada was doing political cartoons for the newspaper El Jicote.

In 1871 he suffered his first encounter with political repression. One of his targets had been the cacique (regional boss) Jesús Gómez Portugal, then out of office. But Gómez, who did not take kindly to being mocked, returned to power and Posada and Pedroso were forced to move to León, where they set up another print shop. Within a year they were heavily involved in a variety of activities: commercial and advertising work, illustration of books, and the printing of posters and representations of historical and religious figures. Among the latter were the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of the Rosary, the Holy Child of Atocha and Saint Sebastian.

In 1875 Posada married Maria de Jesús Vela; in 1883 he was hired as a teacher of lithography at the local Preparatory School. A disastrous flood struck León on June 18, 1888, and Posada was forced to relocate to Mexico City. There he went to work at a publishing company run by Ireneo Paz, famed liberal journalist and grandfather of Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz. Posada, whose energy and dedication to work were legendary, began regularly to submit drawings and engravings to such well-known periodicals as La Patria Ilustrada, Revista de Mexico, El Padre Cobos, Los Almanaques de Padre Cobos, El Ahuizote and Nuevo Siglo. This activity kept Posada so busy that he had to open two additional workshops. Simultaneously, at the request of Paz, he was drawing political cartoons and astonishingly realistic sketches of daily life in the old San Pedro and San Pablo quarter, near the Merced Market.

Unlike other social satirists, there was nothing of the elitist about Posada. In 1880 Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and his son Blas came to the capital from Puebla and established a press aimed at producing inexpensive literature for the masses: historical profiles, comedies, farces, hair-raising thrillers, songs and histories of saints. These sold mainly in plazas and market places. Venegas and his son also founded a number of popular newspapers, among them El Centavo Perdido, La Gaceta Callejera and El Boletín. To the press and to these newspapers, Posada was a prolific contributor.