Nikolay Nikolayevich Baskakov was born May 8, 1918, in Novo Aleksandrovsky, Astrakhan Province. After graduating from high school in 1934, Nikolay studied at the Astrakhan Technical School of the Arts until 1939. He then served in the Soviet Army in Khabarovsk for the next seven years before entering the I.E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Leningrad in 1946. "My chief teacher was Boris Ioganson. The spirit of classicism was in the very system of our education. We, the Academy students, leaned mostly from each other and the works of old masters, as was the case during the Renaissance and later. Only from time to time did our maestro correct our mistakes and make comments. We also learned the view of art from the city itself - once regal Saint Petersburg, with its noble architectural lines and inimitable cultural memory." Baskakov graduated from the institute at the age of 33 and became a member of the Leningrad Chapter of the Russian Artists Union in 1951. Nikolay has participated in local exhibits in Leningrad, republican and national exhibitions, and Soviet art exhibits abroad. He received the Medal 'For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War' and won a Kirov Factory Prize three times. He was also named an honorary member of the Kirov Factory Assembly Department team. Bakakov's work of art are found in museums in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Alma-Ata, Astrakhan, Kazan, Yaroslavl, and in private collections in the Soviet Union, England, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Japan, Canada, and the United States. "I prefer the paintings of the French and Russian impressionism. I have high regard for the antique painting, which brought forth all that is spiritual and lofty in European and Russian art. As far as my creative work is concerned, in spite of my devotion to impressionism, drawing has always been and still remains the most important to me."