Victor Pivovarov was born on January 14, 1937 in Moscow.

He graduated from the Kalinin Moscow Arts and Crafts College (1951–1957) and the Moscow Printing Institute (1957-1962). After graduation he dedicated a few years to book illustrations, mostly illustrating children's books. His most remarkable works in this field are his illustrations of fairy tales and poems. He illustrated more than 50 books and collaborated with children’s magazines Murzilka and Vesyolye Kartinky (Funny Pictures).

In 1967 he created the monotyping series Temptation of St. Antony, which he considered as the beginning of the creative career. The artist started participating in exhibitions from 1977.

In the 1970s, following Kabakov, he developed a new synthetic genre blending pictures with text and named it “albums”. V.Pivovarov has been working in this genre with some breaks since then. 

As for painting, Pivovarov prefers thematically connected conceptual cycles and series of works. The artist has been living in Prague since 1982.