Ivan Chuikov was born in Moscow in 1935, the son of a prominent Soviet artist, Semen Chuikov. As he was growing up, he learned a great deal about art from his father, who discussed with him the problems of modern art and its relation to modern philosophy. He attended the Surikov Art Institute and went on to work as a design specialist.
In the early 1970s he joined the unofficial art movement and developed his own variant of Conceptualism. He was interested in the picture as an illusion, as a form that is a substitute for reality. In the 1980s Chuikov turned to «ready-made» art by using photography in his work. He began to work in the genre of artistic installations, with particular reference to its virtual phenomena.
More recently he has been working on what he has termed «Fragments», manifestations of the immanent deconstruction of the world. He examines the attention paid to these fragments in contemporary visual culture and explores the interaction of pieces of classical art with the banal world of visual clichés.
Chuikov currently exhibits primarily installations and is well recognized among alternative art programs throughout the world. He lives and works in Cologne, Germany.