Itzchak Tarkay was born in Subotica, on the Yugoslav-Hungarian border. At the age of 9, Tarkay and his family were sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp by the Nazis until Allied liberation freed them a year later.[citation needed]
In 1949, his family immigrated to Israel and was sent to the transit camp for new arrivals at Be'er Ya'akov. They lived in a kibbutz for several years. In 1951 Tarkay received a scholarship to the Avni Institute of Art and Design,[4] where he studied under the artist Schwartzman and was mentored by important Israeli artists of the time including Moshe Mokady, Marcel Janco, Yehezkel Streichmanand Avigdor Stematsky.