Shapiro was born in Brooklym in 11916. As a young boy, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to live for two years in a sanatorium in Bedford Hills, New York. He studied academic subjects and art while he was recovering.
Returning to New York in 1937, he enrolled at the American Artists School where he studied with Anton Refregier. He also plunged into artists’ groups active in social and political causes. In 1941, he won a competition held by the U.S. Treasury Department on the theme of “Art in War.” In 1942 he began showing in the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In the late 1940’s he began teaching at Smith College and then the University of British Columbia. He held a Fulbright Fellowship from 1951 to 1953 and spent time in Italy. In the late 1940’s & 1950’s, he also showed in most major print shows. In 1961 Shapiro joined the art department at Hofstra University. In 1976 he spent two months at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography at the University of New Mexico, where he experimented with lithography, floating colors one upon the other to create his Tamarind Mountain Suite. That year, he worked on U.S.A.: The 1960s, a set of woodcuts about the political assassinations of that decade, the Vietnam war, and even the flower children of the time. He also served as President of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA, formerly Society of American Etchers, SAE).
Collections include: Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of Fine Arts (Smithsonian Institution); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum; Castellon Memorial Collection, Teachers College, Columbia University; Minneapolis Institute of Art; New York Public Library Print Collection; U. S. Treasury Dept., Division of Fine Arts Walker Arts Center. Source: Gallery Moderne Ltd