Yuri Petrovich Sanin was born in 1939. He did not attend an academy or institute; he only went through the art college at Penza (south of Moscow). His career was launched in 1969 when his works were presented in the regional art show in the Chernozem Region.

His main interest in art was the traditional theme of landscape, as influenced early in his career by the French Impressionists. As his career progressed, he began to be influenced by the Russian itinerant painters who painted during the last half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th (before the Revolution) and whose favorite themes were aspects of peasant life.

The landscape painters he cites as an influence are the Russian painters Shishkin and Kromskoy. (Kromskoy was from the Voronezh Region and the art museum there is named for him.)

Yuri Sanin died in 1997.