Michel Fingesten, Man in Pot, Woodcut Print, 1930s

Man in pot is a woodcut print realized by Michel Fingesten in 1930s. Above the woodcut representing a man with one hand raised and fire; underneath a card with the engraver's signature and the number 86. 30x24 cm ; it includes passpartout. Good conditions. Michel Fingesten. of an Austrian weaver father and a Jewish mother originally from Trieste. At the age of 16 he studied at the Vienna Academy together with Oskar Kokoschka from 1902 to 1906 he wandered around America, and then Australia, to then arrive in Palermo in 1907. He traveled up the peninsula passing through Trieste and returning to Germany, settling first in Munich in Franz von Stuck's studio, practicing caricature and small format graphics and then in Berlin. In 1913 he began to engrave. He returned to Italy in 1935 to visit his maternal relatives from Trieste and remained there due to the racial persecutions to which the Jews in Silesia were subjected, settling in Milan. In this period he engraved about 500 exlibris On 9 October 1940 he was arrested and interned as a foreigner in the camp of Civitella del Tronto and then of Ferramonti (Cosenza) from November 1941 and will be accused by the Nazis of having painted degenerate art ("Entartete Kunst"). He will die on 8 October 1943, after the liberation of the prison camp by the allies, due to an infection resulting from a surgical operation carried out in Palazzo Sersale di Cerisano, used as a hospital at that time. His remains rest in the cemetery of the small village in the Cosenza greenhouses.