[2][3] Bogatkin was born in Moscow in 1922,[1] the son of Ksenia Semenova, a director and actress at the Vakhtangov Theater, and an actor in Chaliapin's studio.
[4] In 1934, he began his art studies in the studio of the graphic artist Aleksei Ilyich Kravchenko.
[1] From 1940 to 1942, he worked as a stage designer at the Central Theater of the Red Army in Moscow.
In 1942 he was drafted into the Red Army, and in 1943 he joined the studio of war artists established by Mitrofan Grekov[5] and participated in the Second World War as part of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, covering the combat as an artist.
[5] He presented his work at exhibitions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Russia, and Estonia.