Arthur Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and moved to the United States with his parents in his early childhood. Spiegelman studied cartooning in high school and started drawing professionally at age sixteen. Despite his parents wanting him to become a dentist, Art Spiegelman majored in art and philosophy at Harpur College. After leaving college in 1968, he joined the underground comix movement

The following that, Spiegelman became a regular contributor to various underground publications, including Real Pulp, Young Lust and Bizarre Sex.  In 1975, he and Bill Griffith co-founded Arcade, an influential comix revue with artists like Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson and Justin Green.

Besides his cartooning career, Art Spiegelman edited several comix magazines. In 1980, he started the magazine Raw with his wife Françoise Mouly. In the pages of Raw, Spiegelman helped reveal other important and talented artists.

With the publication of 'Maus' in Funny Animals in 1972, Spiegelman's career really took off. 'Maus' was based on the experiences of his parents as Holocaust camp survivors. He expanded this comic into a graphic novel, which he drew from 1980 to 1986, with the Jews presented as mice and the Germans as cats.The book 'Maus: A Survivor's Tale', earned Spiegelman fame. He finished the tale in 1991 with 'Maus II: Art Spiegelman received the Pullitzer Prize in 1992.