Was born in the village of Bezgolosovo in Altaisky Krai, and in 1952 moved to Alma-Ata where he graduated from the N.V. Gogol Art College in 1957. His teachers, including outstanding artists of the older generation like A. M. Cherkassky, L.P. Leontev and P. Ya. Zaltsman. From 1970 he was a member of the Artists Union.
Painter Ivan Bondarenko belongs to the generation of artists that have gone down the history of local arts as the shestidesyatniki (the sixties). His characteristic delicate shades of silver and grey hues create in works of art of his most loved genres - landscape, still life, Nu-art - elegiac haze as if half-asleep or half-awake. A veil of recollections, sentimental mood, contemplation of the unhurried life of nature and hand made forms - buildings and machines - merge in the harmonic balanced world. His 'heroes' - trees, rocks, rivers, seas, animals and people - exist in complete accord in a certain Beautiful space without anything disturbing its calm, without the wars and suffering of the civilization of the 20th century. Emotional and colour preferences of the artist traces back to the traditions of the Silver age of local arts - the time of Borisov-Musatov and Somov.
Just like them, Ivan Bondarenko painted beautiful naked women, quiet groves and factories, void of the fuss and bustle of urban quarters. During the later past of his life Almaty landscapes became a popular genre. During those years, Ivan Bonderenko was one of the few who felt the beauty of the modest corners of the city, changing appearances of the streets, which he painted in different seasons. He was equally attracted to well-known ensembles and structures and ordinary unfamiliar streets, littered with autumn fallen leaves, rows of gigantic polar and elm trees. Some of his paintings were made from views from his studio - view of the American embassy, panorama (a rare genre) of the mountain ranges surrounding the city with Kok-Tiube and the television tower.
His canvasses present viewers with the pale beauty of modest plants, like a magnificent bouquet of mountain prickle, which I. Bondarenko so loved. Strength and sonorous life seemed to fill the still life of splendid iris, peony and roses. It is particularly these flowers he painted on huge canvasses, literally in one stroke a day before he died. The artist hurried to enjoy the charm, one last time, of these flowers, which call up smiles on this earth, the very earth where he was beauty's singer.

Ivan Bondarenko