Tibor Szendrei was born in Debrecen, Hungary, on 18 February 1963. He says it all started at the age of ten, when he became interested in drawing. In spite of this he studied vehicle manufacturing and repairing, but interestingly, never worked in his trade. He was drawing instead. He confesses to be an autodidact developing through hard work and experience. He paints mainly book covers, but several magazines, including children's magazines have also asked him to make illustrations for them. His works can be seen on playing cards and board games, in addition, he has proved to be good at drawing concepts, too. He has worked for all the major Hungarian publishers, furthermore, in the mid '90s Heyne Verlag (Germany) published some of his magazine covers.

"I've known Tibi from the beginning of his career. He was drawing comics at the time, working as a ad/graphic designer as well. He's been a freelance artist since 1988. Before 1988 he painted huge movie posters, worked as a factory worker, a paperboy, and a graphic designer. He worked in a zoo, and was out of job for a while. As he didn't like ties, he decided to start his own business. He has painted more than 500 covers, and innumerable colour and black-and -white illustrations since then. I'm grateful to him as a writer, too, since his graphics have played a significant role in illustrating my writings. Sometimes it was his work that determined the mood of my novel, as he finished his work earlier than me. Some of his paintings are so perfect that I can't stop looking at them." (John Caldwell, fantasy and sci-fi writer)