Yuri Zlotkikov was born in 1930 in Moscow. From 1943 to 1950 he studied at Moscow Secondary Art School at the USSR Academy of Arts. At the same time he was engaged in a sculpture studio at the museum of A.S. Golubkina led by A.I. Grigoryeva. He attended lectures at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, visited the house of the Favorsky-Efimov. From 1954 to 1856 Zlotnikov worked at the Bolshoi Theater as a student - decorator together with A. Tyshler, V. Ryndin. I. Rabinovich. In the mid-1950s, Yuri Zlotnikov began to engage in abstract art after attending lectures on cybernetics and mathematics. His interests in a close circle of like-minded people were shared by artists V. Slepyan and B. Turetsky. In 1956-1957 Zlotnikov developed the “Signaling System” in the visual arts, within the framework of which there is a thorough rapprochement of the scientific and artistic paradigms.
In 1972 he was admitted to the Moscow Union of Artists. He was awarded the silver medal of the Russian Academy of Arts in 1998. In 1990-2000 he continued his plastic experiments working on the series: “Spatial constructions”, “Jerusalem”, “Spatial combinatorics”, “Polyphony” and others. In these series he constantly made unexpected creative discoveries. Zlotnikov passed away in 2016 in Moscow. The artist left a rich legacy for future generations.
