Michel Fingesten was born Michl Finkelstein in 1884 in the village of Buckovice (Buczkowitz), Silesia, in the Habsburg Empire, now part of the Czech Republic, from a Czech-Jewish father and an Italian-Jewish mother, and died in 1943 in Cerisano, Calabria, after the liberation by the allies of the camp in which he had been interned since 1941. He was one of the most original and productive graphic artists and bookplates designers of the twentieth century.