Born in Khvalynsk, now Saratov Oblast to the family of a shoemaker, his first exposure to art was in his early childhood, when he took some lessons from a couple of icon painters and a signmaker. Still, Petrov-Vodkin didn't quite see himself in art at that time; after graduating from middle school, he took a summer job at a small shipyard with plans to get into railroad college in Samara. After failing his exam, he turned to "Art Classes of Fedor Burov" in 1893.

In April 1895, Burov died and for some time Petrov-Vodkin took different painting jobs in the vicinity of Saratov. By chance, his mother's employer invited a well-known architect, R. Meltzer. Petrov-Vodkin was introduced to the guest and impressed him enough to get an invitation to study art at Saint Petersburg. The education was financed by a charitable subscription among local merchants. He also met at this time Borisov-Musatov, an important painter resident in Saratov, who encouraged Petrov-Vodkin to continue his studies.

Petrov-Vodkin stayed in Saint Petersburg from 1895 to 1897 studying at the Baron Stieglits School, before moving to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. There Petrov-Vodkin was a student of Valentin Serov, Isaak Levitan and especially Konstantin Korovin. In 1901 he travelled to Munich to take classes with Anton Aschbe. He graduated in 1904.

Petrov painted, among other things, Christian subjects (loaves and fishes) and homoerotic images like the one here under, Boys Playing (1911). Many of his works were distroyed by the Ortodox Church as deemed too "erotic".

In 1927, Petrov-Vodkin contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and had to curtail painting for several years. He turned to literature and wrote three major semi-autobiographical volumes, Khvalynsk, Euclid's Space and Samarkandia. The first two of these are considered on a par with the finest Russian literature of the time.

The return to painting was problematic: his draftsmanship became caricature-like, and his subjects often turned satirical - this is ascribed to the suffocating atmosphere caused by Stalinist cultural policies of the 1930s through the Great Purge of 1937-1939. However there are notable works of this period, in particular 1919. Alarm. (1934), which basically displays the uneasiness of the time.

Petrov-Vodkin died of tuberculosis in February 1939.