Boris Margo was born in 1902, in Volochisk; a Ukrainian river town on the border of what was then Austria and Russia. Margo received his formal art training at the Polytechnik of Art in Odessa and through various study grants that allowed him to study at Futemas (workshop for the art of the future) in Moscow, and with avant-garde Cubist-Surrealist painter Pavel Filinov. After earning his certificate from the Polytechnik in 1928, he received a government permit to study abroad. He lived briefly in Montreal, Canada and in 1930 he settled permanently in the United States.

Once in the United States, Margo worked predominantly in New York City and spent his summers with the avant-garde community in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Margo's sty...