Although Malyavin was trained by the realist painter Ilya Repin, he was strongly influenced by the French Impressionists and the Scandinavian artist Anders Zorn (1860-1920). Malyavin preferred to work on large canvases where he could get very expressive. His graduation painting, Laughter (1899), was actually rejected by the majority of voters at the Academy.

Despite this fact, Malyavin was still awarded a degree and that same painting won the gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris (1900). That same year, Malyavin married fellow student Natalia Novak-Savich and went on to became a member of the Wanderers and the World of Art.

Malyavin moved to Moscow in 1920, where he did portrait drawings of Lenin, Trotsky and Lunacharsky. In 1922, while traveling to Berlin and Paris to attend his solo exhibitions, he decided to emigrate. He lived in Paris and Nice throughout the 1930s during which time he painted many portraits, including King Gustav V, Prince Eugen and Princess Ingrid of Sweden (1936). In 1940 he was arrested by the Gestapo in Brussels and was accused of espionage. He was released a few months later and, at the age of seventy-one, he was forced to return to Nice on foot. Malyavin died in Nice later that year.

His works are in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; Tretyakov gallery, Moscow and many other leading museums and prominent collections of Europe and the United States.