Natan Yaakov Rapoport was born in
Warsaw,
Poland. In 1936, he won a scholarship to study in
France and
Italy. He fled to the
Soviet Union when the
Nazi Germans invaded Poland. The Soviets initially provided him with a studio but then forced him to work as a manual laborer. When the war ended, he returned to Poland to study at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and
immigrated to Israel. In 1959, he moved to the
United States. He lived in
New York City until his death in 1987.