José Guadalupe Posada

Posada made some twenty thousand engravings for penny broadsheets — crimes, disasters, satires — sold on street corners to people who often could not read. His skeletons went about the business of the living, drinking, riding and posturing, and his elegant skull in a feathered hat became La Catrina.

He died poor and was buried in a sixth-class common grave. Nobody claimed his remains within the seven years the rules allowed, and they were removed and lost. Rivera and Orozco later called him the father of modern Mexican art.