Yaroslav (Slava) Khairullavich Kurbanov was born March 26, 1968 in Machatskala in the Caucasus Mountains of Dagestan. His parents, Khairullah Magomedovich Kurbanov and Galina Vasilevna Pshenitsina are both well-known artists. In addition to the talent he inherited from them, he also received early training when he was accepted into the Children’s Art School on the basis of his early promise. Following his training there, in 1987 he completed four years at the art school in Makhachkala and then spent six years (from 1990 to 1996) at the Repin Institute of Art, Sculpture, and Architecture required to earn a master’s degree. Slava’s work so impressed some German benefactors that he was presented with a scholarship for ability.