Vladimir Alexandrovich Kutilin (1931–2021) was born in Kostroma into the family of an artist. He was a student of the first children’s art school of Nikolai Pavlovich Shlein. In 1959, he graduated from the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute, after which he returned to Kostroma and became involved in active creative work.

Vladimir Kutilin created paintings, illustrated books, made sketches for letters to the editor for the editorial office of the newspaper “Severnaya Pravda” and taught at an art school. He always admired the classical school of painting. He did not recognize abstract art, he said that it was dead. He believed that Malevich’s Black Square would never compare with Levitan’s landscapes in terms of its effect on human souls.

Almost all of Vladimir Kutilin’s works are about Kostroma and the Kostroma people. Often, he even painted an ordinary still life against the background of the Volga. Kutilin was convinced that real life, without deception and fictitious pleasures, could be found in the Kostroma outback, as the history of Russia unfolded there, which had to be preserved at all costs. He wrote,

The painting by Vladimir Kutilin “The Church of Elijah the Prophet” depicts one of the oldest churches in Kostroma — also known as the Church of the Nativity of Christ. It is located on the high Gorodishche hill over the Volga. The former parish church of the village of Gorodishche was built in 1649–1652 on the initiative of the boyar Gleb Ivanovich Morozov and his wife, Feodosia Prokopiyevna Morozova, a prominent figure in Russian history.