Bondarenko trained at Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1887 to 1891 (class of Alexander Kaminsky), completing education at the Zurich Polytechnikum in 1894 and Fyodor Schechtel firm (1895–1896).

He was associated with Savva Mamontov-sponsored group of artists and Abramtsevo Colony; these connections helped him secure his first major project - Russian Crafts pavilions at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, in partnership with Konstantin Korovin.

His style, influenced by Victor Vasnetsov and contemporary work of Sergey Solovyov, is a direct development of Abramtsevo school, yet with unique touch of austere Old Believers traditions and a deep first-hand knowledge of Pskov and Novgorod relics.

During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the government lifted earlier bans off Old Believers, allowing them, at last, to build their own churches (before April, 1905, worship was limited to a few historical places like Rogozhskoye Cemetery).

In particular, he discovered and published the original drawings of Domenico Giliardi and Afanasy Grigoriev (1913), and wrote the first biography of Matvey Kazakov (1912).