Evgeniya Kudrina was born in 1954 in Oktyabrskiy, Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, into a family of engineers. She grew up in Ufa, where she attended an art school. Later, she graduated from the Sculpture department of Savitsky Art College in Penza. After graduation, she returned to Ufa, where she taught at a children’s art school for a while.

In the 80s, Evgeniya Kudrina worked at an Artists Union sculpture residency in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky. There, she found her style and her main material—wood. The path to this artistic clarity, however, had been long, and the artist had tried different styles and worked with different materials, such as ceramics, stone, and metal.

In the 90s, she moved to Moscow.

In general, Evgeniya Kudrina is largely seen as a Moscow artist, and she worked more with the Russian tradition—Christian and pagan at the same time. Her works are noted for their primeval shapes; reminiscent of ancient Slavic idols, they combine the rough form with the completeness of the image. Yet, the draftsmanship of their faces harkens back to the Russian iconography tradition. The artist herself called her characters “a wooden people.” Often, she installed her sculptures outdoors, in places of historic and symbolic importance, as if they indeed were ancient idols.

Kudrina frequented the North of the country, visiting Ferapontovo and going further in the direction of the White Sea. Researchers see connections between her work and the so-called “Russian North,” where the woodwork tradition is very strong—and there is a biographical connection as well, as the artist’s mother was from the Vologda region.