Maliavin was an exceptional Russian portraitist. He began painting in an icon shop in the monastery St. Panthaleon of Mount Athos in Greece. He later studied at the Academy of Arts and entered Ilya Repin's studio. The great Russian art collector Pavel Tretyakov bought one of his early paintings and Maliavin won a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair in 1900. Although he produced propaganda after the Bloshevik victory in 1917, Maliavin settled in Paris with his family in 1922. Repin's infuence is apparent in all his work but especially in Maliavin's sensitive studies of Russian peasants.