Nikolai Fedorovich Kurnikov was born on May 18, 1938 in the village Semyn Vyaznikovskogo district of Vladimir region. He graduated from courses at the Central House of Folk Art Krupskaya in 1968. Kurnikov participated the Regional Arts Exhibition in 1970 and was active in Suzdal. In 1971 he participated in the All-Russia exhibition of young artists, held in the halls of Russia Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. Later the artist was a regular participant of republican and All-Union Art Exhibition. He is one of the early members of the Vladimir School of Landscape Painting with Kim Britov and Valery Kokurin, named after their home city of Vladimir, Russia. The School is arguably one of the most important movements in Soviet art after 1950. It is characterized by thick palettes, distorted images, two dimensional perspectives and often vibrant palettes. A member of the Artists’ Union of the USSR since 1980 the works of Nikolai Kurnikov are in the collections of leading museums, in private collections in Russia and abroad. The artist lived and worked in the city of Vladimir throughout his artistic career. Nikolai Fedorovich Kurnikov died on September 3, 2006 at 68 years of age.