José Guadalupe Posada was one of the most recognized and influential Mexican artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the foremost chronicler of the social, cultural, technological, and political changes that transformed Mexico into a modern nation. He depicted the transition of Mexican and world society from the 19th to the 20th century. He illustrated and interpreted the early years of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He established an exuberant corpus of popular political, cultural, social, and technologically-focused art and through this corpus, his influence extended to generations of Mexican, Chicano, other Latino, and other popular or political artists who followed him. His influence was so great that he has become the canonical interpreter of Mexican fin de siglo life and the social conflicts that led to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1910. He transcended his initial status of craftsman or artist and for the generations that followed him, became one of the legendary figures himself of the decline of the Porfiriato and the expression of revolution.

Posada was born on 2 February 1852 and he died on 20 January 1913, just days before the Decena Trágica of the Mexican Revolution. He was not immediately famous in Mexico. Only one of the three neighbors who certified his death knew how to sign his name; the state paid for a sixth class burial.

Posada did not even necessarily identify himself as an artist. A self-portrait of Posada in his publisher’s pressroom accompanied an advertisement for the publisher. Wearing a visor and a printer's apron and standing in front of the printing press amid bundles of broadsheets and pamphlets, Posada hands a proof sheet to his employer. Wearing the green visor and the large apron of the printer identifies Posada as a craftsman, rather than an artist, who would have worn a smock. Listing a variety of subjects available from the print shop, the advertisement indicates Posada's versatility as an illustrator:

(Founded in the year 1880 of the nineteenth century)
This long-established firm stocks a varied and select
Assortment of Songs for the current year,
Collections of Greetings, Tricks, Puzzles, Games, Cookbooks,
Recipes for Making Candies and Pastries,
Models of Speeches, Scripts for Clowns, Patriotic Speeches,
Plays for Children or Puppets, and Charming Stories.
The New Oracle,
or the Book of the Future,
Rules for Telling the Cards,
The New Mexican Fortune Teller,
Black and White Magic,
or the Book of Sorcerers.
Although little was left behind which might suggest clues about Posada's personal life, he was remembered by Don Blas Vanegas Arroyo, the middle son of Posada's publisher. Interviewed by Anita Brenner in 1929, Don Blas said that Posada:

was very industrious. He began to work at eight o'clock in the morning and worked until seven at night. My father would enter the shop (we set up a shop for him after he had worked a while with us) with whatever he wanted to print, and say, 'Señor Posada, let's illustrate this,' and Posada would read it and while he was reading would pick up his pen and say, 'What do you think about this little paragraph,' and he would dip his pen into the special ink he used and then give the plate an acid bath and it was finished. He got three pesos a day whatever he did, and in that time it was a lot because whoever had as much as seventy-five pesos a month was at least a general. Posada was very good-humored and peace-loving. He hated quarrels, and treated everybody well. He was no snob.

Posada’s work was accessible to all Mexicans, including those illiterate Mexicans who turned to Posda’s images and their symboism to understand what was happening to their country.

In 1921 the young French artist Jean Charlot, who worked as a muralist in Mexico City, encountered the broadsides of Posada. Though his prints and broadsides were familiar to many Mexicans, Posada as a person was largely forgotten. Charlot's pioneering article on Posada published in 1925 in Revista de Revistas brought Posada to the attention of the art world.