Arsen Khairullavich Kurbanov was born in 1969 in the city of Makhachkala, Dagestan (in the former USSR) to artistic parents. His mother is painter Galina Vasilevna Pshenitsina and his father is painter Khairullah Magomedovich Kurbanov. From 1981 to 1988 Arsen Kurbanov studied in the Dagestan Art College named after Jeman. He defended his diploma painting, a mural, on the theme “Artist and Time.” From 1988 to 1994, Arsen studied at the Repin Institute for painting Sculpture, and Architecture (also called the Russian Academy of Art) in St. Petersburg, in the studio of U. M. Neprintsov. During his time of studying, Kurbanov participated in exhibits in Berlin, Germany. After he finished his classwork, he produced and defended his diploma painting on the theme “The White Goat.”