Zinaida Vladimirovna Volkovinskaya was born in 1915 in Odessa, Ukraine. She graduated from the Odessa Art Institute in 1932, and studied at the Kiev Art Institute from 1934 to 1940. She was active in Krasnoyarsk from 1941 to 1945, and thereafter in Kiev, Ukraine. She began exhibiting her work in 1941. She is also known as a graphic artist.