Painter, muralist and printmaker Steven Dohanos was born in Lorain, Ohio and studied at the Cleveland School of Art. A member of the National Society of Mural Painters and the Society of Illustrators, he was employed in the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the Department of the Treasury in the mid-1930s and during that time executed several murals for the U. S. Post Office.

In 1938, he began producing magazine illustrations and covers. In the early 1940s Dohanos moved to Westport, Connecticut and in 1942 sold his first of more than 125 covers to The Saturday Evening Post.

His stone lithographs, few in number and eagerly collected, embody his social realist style. He died in Westport.