Vagrich Bakhchanyan was born in 1938 in Kharkov, Ukraine. He was a member of the Kharkov artistic circle together with Eduard Limonov and Anatolii Brussilovsky. In 1960 he moved to Moscow, where he began to participate in the alternative art movement and met leading figures such as Kabakov, Sooster, and Sobolev. His drawings and collages often appeared in the periodicals Znanie – Sila and Literaturnaya Gazeta and are believed to have significantly influenced the development of graphic art in the post-Stalinist period.
Bakhchanyan draws much of his inspiration from the Russian literary tradition. In his collages he combines elements of the Russian absurdist tradition with European Dada. In many ways his work can be regarded as a forerunner of Sots Art.
After his emigration to the United States in 1974, Bakhchanyan broadened his artistic approach by exploring genres such as «mail-art», performance, and staged events, and by working in book design and conceptual prose. Vagrich Bakhchanyan has died in 2009 in New York City.