He studied at the Art Students League in 1929 and at the National Academy of Design from 1929 to 1932 under such established artists as Leon Kroll and George Brandt Bridgman.

"[1] In 1932, upon graduation from the National Academy, Seymour Fogel served as an apprentice to the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, then working on his controversial mural at Rockefeller Center in New York City.

By the mid-1930s Fogel was an established member of the New York City art community, and was familiar with artists like Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Alexander Brook, Georg Theo Hartman, Arnold Blanch, Adolf Dehn, Phillip Guston, Ben Shahn, and Rico Lebrun.

From 1934 to 1941 Fogel was awarded several mural commissions by both the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration ("WPA") and the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture, executing murals in such places as Brooklyn, New York; Safford, Arizona; Cambridge, Minnesota; Washington, D.C., and at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

While traveling across the United States in freight trains to complete mural commissions for the Federal government, Fogel produced drawings of ordinary Americans who had been affected by the Great Depression.

In Texas he executed what have been considered the first abstract murals in the state for the American National Bank (1954), which was recognized by Time magazine as one of the year's most significant achievements in corporate art, the Baptist Student Center at the University of Texas (1949), the First National Bank in Waco (1955), the First Christian Church in Houston (1956) and the Petroleum Club, also in Houston (1950).

[3] In 1959, Seymour Fogel moved back to New York City, where he maintained a studio and established his residence first in Westport and then in Weston, Connecticut.