The pasha's son had been made a ward of Tsar Paul I of Russia and given the name Peter Pavlovich Zhvantsov, which later changed to Zvantsov and then became Zvantsev.

Zvantseva's father was a Collegiate Assessor and though she grew up in privilege, at the age of sixteen, she left home to make her own way.

[3][4] In 1899, Zvantseva returned to Moscow and opened an art school where painters like Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov and Nikolai Ulyanov taught[2][3] students including Nina Simonovich-Efimova who studied there in 1900.

Among their students were Marc Chagall, Sergey Gorodetsky, Elena Guro, Mikhail Matyushin, Heorhiy Narbut, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Ivan Puni, Olga Rozanova, and Margarita Sabashnikova (later Woloschin).

[7] The boundaries between apartments and households was blurred, with artists from the school mingling freely with writers who congregated at the Ivanov's space, and conjugal relations extending beyond the marriage bond.