Together with Leonetto Cappiello, Giovanni Mario Mataloni, Leopoldo Metlicovitz and Marcello Dudovich, he is considered one of the most important Italian poster designers [citation needed].

Adolfo Hohenstein was born in Saint Petersburg, the capital of Russian Empire, to German parents, Julius and Laura Irack.

He created the posters for La Bohème and Tosca, as well as publicity for Campari, Buitoni and Corriere della Sera, numerous postcards, covers for scores and booklets.

In the first years of the 1900s, after marrying Katharina Plaskuda, a widow, he traveled more and more frequently between Italy and Germany till 1906, when, after winning the competition for the graphical symbol and the poster for the "Esposizione per il Traforo del Sempione", he left Milan for Bonn and Düsseldorf definitively.

The German years saw him engaged mostly as a painter and involved in the decoration of numerous buildings, among them one of the first in constructed reinforced concrete in Renania (1911).