Calavera Garbancera

Posada's La Catrina

The figure known today as La Catrina was engraved by José Guadalupe Posada around 1912 under another name: Calavera Garbancera. She was a female skull with a large feathered hat, without a dress, only the skull and the headdress.

"Garbancera" was the nickname for those who sold chickpeas and, by extension, for people of humble origins who wanted to pass as European and denied their roots. The calavera mocked that vanity: under the elegant hat, we are all bones.

The name Catrina and the full body in a dress came later, in 1947, when Diego Rivera painted her arm in arm with Posada in his mural "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central".

The MUNAG does not display the Garbancera plate, but it holds original calaveras by Posada from the same period and the same workshop. You can see them below.