Segal was educated at the Cooper Union, Pratt Institute of Design, New York University (B.S., 1950), and Rutgers University (M.F.A., 1963) and began his artistic career as an abstract painter. In 1958 he started creating sculptures from chicken wire and plaster and two years later turned to plaster casts, often using family members and friends as models. Though he was associated with members of the burgeoning Pop art movement in the late 1950s, Segal's sculptures, which were frequently outfitted with the bland commercial props of the Pop idiom, are distinguished from that characteristically ironic movement by a mute, ghostly anguish. His casting technique, in which the live model is wrapped in strips of plaster-soaked cheesecloth, imparts a rough texture and a minimum of surface detail to the figures, thus heightening the sense of anonymity and isolation. Notable works include The Truck (1966), The Laundromat (1966–67), and Hot Dog Stand (1978).