Gonzalo Rocha clarifies why inn opaque to his colleagues from the 19th and 20th centuries

Mexico is a prolific country in cartoonists. Why then José Guadalupe Posada has overshadowed his nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century? Gonzalo Rocha, Monero de The day, In the presentation of his graphic novel Posada: life is worth nothing and the loose sheet, a penny (Resistance Editorial), at the 46th International Book Fair of Mining Palace (FILPM).

The cartoonist offered several hypotheses. The first is related to his work. Unlike many of their caricaturist congeners, His work did not focus on the political court. After some time, Rocha argued, The characters of this activity close to power usually cease to be memorable. We no longer understand who or what is about, and only the specialized ones return Guadalupe.

The second hypothesis has to do with what Posada Not only was he a fine academic cartoonist, with a lot of practice and filigree, but also a printer who knew the secrets of the machines of his workshops. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he partially abandoned European influences and could synthesize them in vignettes of a very Mexican temperament.

A third is attributable to its appearance since two photographs have existed and/or survived. “In them we can see that the pint of that hydrocálido cartoonist is that of a spray man, with a mustache between tappo and of downpour, pulco belly, slapping and brunette complexion. A man whom we can imagine as pachón and generous as a taquero, appearance that sister with his work, in what we can call a ‘preclara Mexicanidad’. This, for me, responds to why Posada remains the hero of the pages of the books we continue writing about him. ”

In the presentation made in the rector gallery, Rocha said he made this graphic novel about the creator of the Catrina because there was not one. Of the many titles about Posada, almost all historical, of analysis or artistic essay, there was no graphic novel. Cartoons, yes, in a didactic tone. We had to do something that leads us to another enlightened literature, being in addition to a cartoonist.

For Mercury López Casillas, a student of Posada, this graphic novel “impacts from its roof and to its last pages, in which Rocha gives us five great portraits of the recorder. Each page is a waste of talent that keeps the reader clinging to the reader who can enjoy dialogues, descriptions and sequences without text.

In Rocha’s novel, great empathy and admiration for the recorder, told from the proximity in the daily press, can be seen. The author deeply understands Posada; Fill your work of amazing vignettes and texts that scratch in poetry.

It is comic It is divided into four chapters: The death of Posada, Childhood, Chalequero y The dance of the 41. In the last two, Rocha tells two historical events that Posada specified in a couple of images. In both cases it tells the process that leads to the recorder to the creation of two of his great works.

Accurate: In this unique graphic novel, the author resorts to more than 50 engravings of Posada, but not copying them, but they reinterpret them ingeniously, in small and large details; Mrs. Caralampia is resurrected and puts muscles and skin to a couple of skulls.

López Casillas said that there is still the premises where the second workshop of Posada was, on the street of Moneda: A plaque was placed; However, it is now a commercial place. The plate is covered with things they sell. It would be worth recovering it.

For the cartoonist Luis Fernando, who lived the process of this graphic novel, Through the drawing of Posada we see Rocha draw. Then, it establishes elements of mirrors, and that also transmits us how it could be inn in that world that we will never know, of course, internal, and with its opinions, joy and finals that, however sad they are, without knowing that their work is more alive than ever, even internationally.

At the end of the act it was announced that Gonzalo Rocha’s exhibition, which takes the same title as the book, in the Los Pinos Cultural Complex, extends until March 30.