Maharbek Tuganow was born in 1881 in the village of Dur-Dur in Terek Oblast. His father, Safar Aslangerievich Tuganov, was a botanist. When he was 8 years old he applied to a private boarding school. In 1891 he applied to the Real School of Vladikavkaz. In 1900 he was sent to Saint Petersburg to apply to a mining institute, but instead he applied to the Imperial Academy of Arts, in which Ilya Repin was working. In 1907 he founded his own study of arts in Vladikavkaz. In 1920 he became a chief of the propaganda department of the local bolshevik party. In 1926-1930 he taught academic drawing in Pedagogical technical school of Vladikavkaz. In 1930 he went to South Ossetia, into the city of Stalinir (modern Tskhinvali), where he created an art gallery in the Museum of Local History and worked as a main painter of the South Ossetian Dramatic State theatre. He spent the last years of his life in Ordzhonikidze (modern Vladikavkaz). He died in 1952 and was buried in the necropolis of the Ossetian church.[1]
