Vecheslav Frantsevich Zagonek was born December 19, 1919, in the city Irkutsk, East Siberia.

After demobilization in 1945 Vecheslav Zagonek entered at the first course of Department of Painting at the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin, where he studied of Mikhail Bernshtein, Alexander Zaytsev, Genrikh Pavlovsky, Semion Abugov, Gleb Savinov.

In 1950 Vecheslav Zagonek graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Boris Ioganson studio, together with Evgenia Antipova, Anatoli Vasiliev, Nina Veselova, Tatiana Kopnina, Nikolai Mukho, Alexander Pushnin, Alexander Sokolov, Yuri Tulin, and other young artists.

In 1965 Vecheslav Zagonek was awarded a silver medal of the Academy of Arts of the USSR.

In 1988 Vecheslav Zagonek was elected a member of the Academy of Arts of the Soviet Union.