Arkady Petrov was born in the village of Shakhty Komsomolets, near Gorlovka in the Stalin (since 1961 Donetsk) region of the Ukrainian SSR. Petrov comes from a miner’s family. After spending his childhood in the mining province he moved to Moscow in 1957. In 1959-63 he was studying at the Moscow Art School "In Memory of 1905", in 1963-1969 – at the Moscow State Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov in the workshop of V.G. Tsyplakov. In the 1970s he was officially working on monumental orders mainly in the mosaic technique in a recognizable primitive style. Easel works were almost forbidden to be shown at the exhibitions. In the 1970s-80s he was close to the group of social art artists: Rostislav Lebedev, Boris Orlov. Leonid Purygin became Petrov's disciple. During perestroika Petrov gained fame also due to the participation in exhibitions connected with the cult film «Assa» as well as to participation in the first Soviet Sotheby's auction (1988) and further auctions. Those years Petrov's works have been purchased into many international collections. Further development in painting is related to a dramatic change in visual language. Petrov still thematizes provincial miner’s life and analytically works with Soviet symbols changing the style of paintings on average once a few years. In the mid-1990s he was also engaged in sculpture and art of objects. In the 2000s and 2010s several museum retrospectives of Petrov’s art took place. He has been actively working on new painting series. Lives in Moscow.