Dmitri Prigov

Dmitri Prigov:  was born in Moscow in 1940.  A prolific writer (in 2005 he estimated that he had already written 35,000 poems), he was a founder of the “Moscow Conceptual Art” school.  Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, he published in underground and émigré journals, and was briefly sent to a psychiatric hospital after being arrested by the KGB.  With the onset of glasnost and perestroika, he was able to publish and show his visual art in “official” venues, and also exhibited his art outside of Russia.  He won several prizes, including, in 2002, the Boris Pasternak prize.  He died, in Moscow, of a heart attack in 2007.  His collected works are being published in Russia, edited by Mark Lipovetsky.  In 2019, Ugly Duckling Presse will publish a collection of his work in English.