Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin was born in 1876 in the village of Tarhovka near St. Petersburg. The artist's parents were representatives of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia: father worked as a chief doctor at a naval hospital, mother having received an excellent education, played the piano wonderfully, but after getting married, she devoted her life to raising children.

Ivan's passion for drawing came from parents who were actively interested in painting and instilled in children the right artistic taste.

Simultaneously with studying at the gymnasium, the future illustrator began to attend the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. In 1896, Ivan Bilibin graduated with honors from the First Classical Gymnasium in St. Petersburg. By the will of his father, he had to enter the law faculty of the university in order to get a decent profession. But the artist did not leave drawing classes. For several years, he took lessons in the workshop from Ilya Repin.

In 1900, Ivan Bilibin entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Inspired by the work of Viktor Vasnetsov, the young man had determined his path in art. He created his first magical illustrations, which soon turned into books of folk tales and were published.

Participation in ethnographic expeditions to the North gave the illustrator valuable knowledge about the culture of the Russian people, which formed the basis of the unique "Bilibin style".

Since 1904, the artist had often been offered work on the design of Russian and foreign opera productions. In different periods of his life, he made sets and sketches of costumes for such operas as "The Snow Maiden", "Boris Godunov", "The Golden Cockerel" and others.

During the revolution of 1917, Ivan Biliban decided to leave St. Petersburg for the Crimea. In the future, he planned to immigrate to Cyprus. But he could not get to Cyprus because of the spread of typhus. The artist was sent from the ship to quarantine in Egypt. Staying in Cairo, the illustrator opened his workshop and was quite popular.

In 1925, Ivan Biliban moved to Paris. In this city he returned to the design of theatrical productions, carried out private orders. Russian emigrants especially appreciated the artist's illustrated fairy tales, which reminded them of their homeland.

In 1936, upon returning to his beloved Leningrad, the artist began teaching graphics at the Academy of Arts, continuing to work for the theater. Ivan Bilibin died in February 1942 from exhaustion during the siege of Leningrad.