Ivan Trofimovich Grigoryev was born in 1906 in the village of Ivanovo-Kazansk, Republic of Bashkortostan. He recalled,

It may be hard to believe that these cheerful, light, and vibrant still lifes were created by a seriously ill person who was limited in movement and rarely left the walls of his apartment. However, it was due to hardships that Ivan Grigoryev finally had the time to immerse in creative work in the last 20 years of his life, while in his youth he had never had enough time. Ivan Grigoryev graduated from the Moscow Polygraphic Institute in 1934 and returned to Chuvashia shortly before the Great Patriotic War. There, he taught drawing at the Alatyr Art and Engraving College. Later, he was called up for military service and suffered two serious wounds on the front line. For several years, he was the director of the Chuvash Art Gallery. He dedicated a lot of his time and energy to teaching at the Cheboksary Art School. Most of his famous paintings were created in the period between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Ivan Grigoryev’s paintings show his fascination with the art of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, the desire to capture the movement of light and air, and the use of long and dynamic separate strokes. In particular, Grigoryev studied the art of Paul Cézanne in depth, which is reflected not only in the composition of his still lifes but also in his choice of subjects (one of his works even features a reproduction of his favorite artist’s painting).

Like Cézanne, Grigoryev strove to combine classical traditions with the search for a unique style. A typical still life with art symbols (a plaster mask being an allegory of sculpture, brushes represent painting, and the mandolin — music) may be interpreted as a representation of the frailty of human life and the immortality of art, but it also tells the story of the painter and his personality.

A cup and saucer set on the table, colored postcards, and art albums show that the artist’s life was a continuous creative process where the everyday and the ordinary could not be separated from high art.