Painter, graphic artist and book designer, stage designer, monumentalist, art theoretician, writer, dramatist and the creator of the spherical perspective. The author of Symbolist compositions, portraits, landscapes and still life painting. From 1893-1895 he studied painting and drawing in F.E.Burov’s classes in Samara, between 1897-1904 at the MSPSA under N.A.Kasatkin and V.A.Serov. In 1901 he studied in Munich at the A.Ashbe studio. Between 1901-1907 he travelled across France, Italy, Greece and North Africa. From 1908 he lived in St. Petersburg. From 1910-1917 he taught at the E.N.Zvantseva school in St. Petersburg. During 1918-1933 he taught his own artistic technique at the Academy of Arts. He took part in World of Art group exhibitions in the 1910s. He was involved in the activities of the Four Arts group (from 1924). K.S.Petrov-Vodkin was greatly influenced by the contemporary French painting of P.Cezanne, H.Matisse, P.Gauguin, and the creative work of Russian artist V.E.Borisov-Musatov. Petrov-Vodkin also discovered old Russian art and early Italian Renaissance painting, which he blended with contemporary aesthetic experiments. His most famous work of the 1910s is Bathing the Red Horse (1912). His technique paved the way for even bolder artistic innovations in avant-garde. In the 1910s Petrov-Vodrin’s work flourishes. The artist has developed his own artistic system of spatial vision which communicates the planetary scale of the event, the "spherical perspective". This spatial principle runs through most of his paintings: Bathing the Red Horse (1912), Girls on the Volga (1915), Death of the Commissar (1928). In the revolutionary years, when he became acutely aware of the historical changes in Russian life, he created the painting entitled "1918 in Petrograd (Petrograd Madonna)" (1920). His teaching activities prompted him to produce some unique still lifes. "Pink Still Life, Apple Tree Branch" (1918), "The Herring" (1918) are true masterpieces in the still life genre. The distinctive "planetary" portraits occupy a special place in his work of the 1920s. "Portrait of S.N.Andronikova" (1925) is the most perfect of them all. His "Death of the Commissar" (1928) is a shrill requiem to the era. The last decade of his life is filled with bitter disappointment with the Soviet system. The feeling of dissonance is packed into his painting entitled "House Warming" (1937). In the 1930s he produced the autobiographical trilogy "Khlynovsk", "Euclid Space" and "Samarkandia", where the artist juxtaposed oppressive contemporary life with reminiscences from his wonderful youth.