Segal was born in 1907 and grew up in Berlin, Germany, as the son of the Romanian Jewish painter Arthur Segal,[REF] but spent the time of the First World War in Ascona, Switzerland close to an alternative community called Monte Verità (McKean: 1988).
He moved to London, UK in 1936 where he met and eventually married Eva Bradt, a student at the Architectural Association School of Architecture.