[2] In 1897, he started his studies in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg with Ivan Shishkin and Alexander Kiselyov.

[4] In 1919, the government was dismissed by the forces loyal to Alexander Kolchak, and Gurkin escaped to Mongolia, where he lived for a year.

In 1921, with the help of the Red Partisans, led by their commander Sergey Kochetov, he moved to the independent Tuva.

There he continued to depict the everyday life and traditions of the locals, including the shamanism.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he was involved in education, in particular, he created illustrations to Altay epic poems and to primary school books.