Philip Kaplan was born in Grodno, Russia on March 24, 1903.  He emigrated to the U.S. in 1911 with his family, settling in Cleveland, Ohio.  Working as a self taught commercial artist Kaplan married Esther Rose in 1933.  They moved to New York with their daughter Luba in 1934.  In New York Kaplan worked for the next 25 years as the Executive Art Director of an adverising agency.  He also worked with S.W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York in the 1940's and exhibited in the U.S. and London. 

Additionally, Kaplan went on to collect thousands of written materials. His collection of American expatriate writers was acquired by the Morris Library in 1963; his Weingrow Collection, a variety of original illustrated books, periodicals, manuscripts, catalogs, pamphlets, and other written materials was acquired by Hofstra University in 1972. He died in California in 1990.

Philip Kaplan died in Brooklyn, NY in 1971.