Pankin was born in 1938 in Moscow in a family of an architect with a backgorund of a graphic artist who then became the first teacher of Alexander Pankin. Pankin has graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute in 1963 and has been expermienting with abstraction. In 1971 he became a member of Architects’ Union. Throughout 1970s – the beginning of 1980s he worked in Eliy Belyutin’s New Reality studio under and researched the forms ofthe new figurative painting tradition.

From the beginning of the 1990s, Pankin started his 'Malevich and visual thinking' research series which later evolved into what the artist refers to as the 'meta abstraction'- his very own significant style of combining visual arts with mathematical methodology, be it painting, objects, installations or any other media. Throughout his career, Pankin had over thirty solo exhibitions, including his project at Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (2019). Artists' works could be found in the collections of The State Tretiakov Gallery, The State Russian Museum and NCCA as well as many prestigious private collections in Russia and abroad. Pankin died on 12 October 2020.