Viktor Butko was born in 1978 in Moscow, into a family of artists. As a child, he often spent time with his artist grandfather, Victor Chulovich, (1922- 1994) who was a celebrated Russian genre scene and landscape painter. Butko sites his grandfather as being one of his greatest inspirations and remembers spending time with him in his studio while watching him paint. In addition to the support of his grandfather, he also received artistic direction from his parents, artists Nickolay Butko and Marina Chulovich.

Butko’s formal studies began at The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. After completing his studies at the MSPSA he continued his studies,  at the Academic Dacha of Artists, created by the great Russian artist Ilya Repin for students of the Academy of Fine Arts. There he worked under the guidance of famous artists Alexey Gritsay and the Tkachev brothers, which had a big impact on his creativity.

Butko is primarily known for his large-scale plein air landscape paintings. His first solo show was held in the United States, in 2002 at the McCarthey Gallery, one of the foremost dealers in the United States for Russian Impressionist art. Since then he has had several solo shows and participated in numerous group exhibitions at galleries in New York, Maine, and Massachusetts.

His work is in the Vyshniy Volochek Museum collection, Collection of the IRRA, and private collections in Russia, China, and the U.S.  Butko regularly paints in Sag Harbor and Maine as well as Russia and Italy. He currently works and lives with his artist wife, Kelly Carmody, in Waltham Massachusetts.