Michel Adlen was born in Belarus on May 15, 1898. He received his artistic training in Vienna, where he exhibited for the first time and cooperated in the humorous magazine Die Muskete. From 1923 he was active in Berlin, where he participated in numerous graphic arts exhibitions. Adlen eventually moved to Paris, where he founded the Jewish Painters and Sculptors Association. He was also a member of several different groups of artists, such as the Union of Russian Artists in Paris and La Satire and Les Imagiers.

Initially, Adlen was heavily influenced by Cubist and Fauvist tendencies, around 1925, however, he took up the tradition of French landscape painting after Corot and Pissarro, but some of his works are also in reminiscence of Cézanne. As a representative of the École de Paris, Adlen also created landscapes and still life artworks, often with wild flowers and fruits, that have a melancholic mood due to the predominance of various grey tones.

And from 1929 to 1939 he worked as an illustrator for several major Parisian magazines and received numerous commissions. In addition to many paintings, he also created numerous graphic works such as lithographs, colored prints as well as etchings, and drawings. His works are part of several museum collections like the museums in Moscow and Kiev, and the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris. Michel Adlen died 1980.