Gueorgui Chichkine was born on the 25th of January 1948 in Ekaterinburg, Russia.  

As a child he showed an early passion for drawing and by the time he was ten years old he was enrolled in the Fine Art School.

During all of his youth, the teenager was always deeply influenced by the atmosphere at his great-grand-parents’ house, steeped with authentic Russian traditions conserved during the soviet regime. Young Shishkin travelled to the many old cities in his region. With his easel, he visited monasteries and paid close attention to the icons and frescoes. In the Vladimir Cathedral, an ex-capital of Russia, he was struck by the works of Andrei Rublev, considered the first Russian painter.

In 1975 he graduated from the National Fine Arts and Architecture School in his home town, then a trainee at the Stroganoff Institute of Industrial and Fine Arts in Moscow.