Printmaker, painter, sculptor, and educator Mortimer Borne was born in Rypin, Poland, on December 21, 1902. In 1916 he immigrated to the United States with his parents. He studied at the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League, the Beaux-Art Institute of Design, and with Charles Webster Hawthorne, founder of the Cape Cod School of Art. He taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City from 1945 to 1967.

As a teenager in Poland, Mortimer Borne won a national school competition with a sculptured head of Peter the Great. His printmaking career started in the mid-1920s with a group of drypoint etchings of New York City, and in 1930 his work was recognized by Frederick Keppel & Co., who began representing him. Mortimer Borne's work is in the permanent collections of many museums, but his largest holding is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[Adapted from information formerly posted on the Old Print Shop website: https://web.archive.org/web/20030415162849/http://www.oldprintshop.com/artists/borne.html]