Lydia Masterkova was born in Moscow in 1929. In 1943-1946 she studied at the Secondary Art School and then entered the Surikov Institute of Art. Influenced by the American art exhibition in Moscow in the late 1950s, she started developing her own style of Abstract Expressionism. Together with her husband, Vladimir Nemukhin, she became one of the first Moscow underground artists to develop the tradition of «object-free art» in Russian culture.
In the early 1960s the artist joined the Lianozovo Group. During this period Masterkova turned to collage and began to use geometrical figures in her work. By the early 1970s her plastic constructions had become saturated with images of Pop Art and had acquired a more rational form still remaining within the framework of abstract art.
In 1975 Masterkova emigrated to France. Her French period is very colorful due to the international language of art and best of the «Paris school» traditions she has since incorporated into her work. Yet she has not lost any of her Russian artistic consciousness in this transition. Masterkova regularly participates in exhibitions and activities of Russian nonconformism in Moscow and in the West. She has died in 2003 in Paris.