Vyacheslav Frantsevich Zagonek was born in 1919 in Irkutsk. He studied at the children's art school in Leningrad from 1932, at the Leningrad Intermediate Art School from 1936 to 1939, and the Repin Institute from 1945 to 1950 under professor B. Ioganson. He began exhibiting his works in 1939.