In his teens, Newman left Lithuania to live in Switzerland, and acted as a messenger, delivering messages between clandestine lovers; he spoke Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, German and Yiddish. He then lived in England and South Africa, attending the National School of Arts in Johannesburg. In the early 1920s, Newman migrated to the U.S., lived in Boston, and worked in the Newton offices of the Bachrach Studios. After a brief stint as a retoucher at the White Studios in New York City, he returned to Boston to work as a commercial artist while attending the Vesper George School of Art, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (now the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts), and the Woodbury School of Art.