A hereditary icon painter, Ivan Golikov, stood at the origins of Palekh lacquer painting.

The artist was born in Moscow in January 1887 (old style — in December 1886). When he was seven years old, his family returned to Palekh. Since the age of ten, he studied in the famous workshop of Nikolai Sofonov, later worked at icon painting workshops in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and painted churches. After the revolution of 1917 and the establishment of Soviet power, which hindered icon painting, the artist started to search for and develop his own artistic style.

Ivan Golikov dwelled for a long time on how and in what form it was possible to preserve original Palekh art, and in the early 1920s he created his first lacquer painting. He was inspired by the boxes from Fedoskino, which the master saw in the Crafts Museum in Moscow (in 1999 its exhibits became part of the collection of the All-Russian Decorative Art Museum).

Art historian Vladimir Porudominsky described the excitement that gripped the artist at that moment:

Interestingly, the artist at first could not get a papier mâché blank, so he cut the bottom out of a photographic cuvette and painted his first miniature on it.

A year later, he was already working in the studio of Alexander Glazunov and created a number of lacquer paintings. He demonstrated the main features of this new art in them, taking as a basis the traditions of different iconographic schools: Palekh, Stroganov and Yaroslavl. In 1924, Golikov became one of the founders of the “Artel of Ancient Painting”.

The artist preserved elements of the icon painting style, but at the same time created dynamic images full of life: hunting scenes, dates, round dances, riding on troikas (carriages drawn by three horses), battles. He was often inspired by Russian songs. When he heard the old coachmen song “There is a Reckless Troika Racing”, Golikov was shocked by the beauty of its melody and words. Just like a folk song is sung many times and never repeated the same, his troikas were different every time: winter and summer troikas, with and without landscapes, wedding ones, night ones and many others.

Golikov was often criticized for painting red, blue, pink, and gold horses that do not exist in reality. But the master had a special artistic intuition: the images he created were not naturalistic, but poetic. His colorful miniatures with exquisite proportions are distinguished by dynamism and swiftness of lines; one could feel in his troikas the speed and the passion for life.