The artist and sculptor Dmitry Prigov (1940-2007) is one of the most prominent Russian poets – a representative of the Moscow school of conceptualism, a dissident who was published only in foreign publications during the Soviet period. He was repressed for his openly ironic and scathing political poetry, forcibly committed to a psychiatric clinic after a public appearance in 1986, and released only after the intervention of influential Soviet and foreign writers.
Prigov's poetry is characterised by ironic conceptualism, stylisation and the use of naive elements; his texts caricature the rigidity and flatness as well as the emphasised moralisation of Soviet official language. One of Prigov's poetic tasks was to deconstruct rigid structures of thought, choosing not only the collective prejudices of Soviet society, but also philosophical, religious and aesthetic motifs, giving the reader the opportunity to "continue" the work begun and to invest a certain intellectual effort in the reading process.
Ilmārs Šlāpins