Dmitrii Prigov is a poet, prose writer, and artist who works in graphic, installation, and performance media. He is one of the leading representatives of Moscow conceptualism and is also associated with sots-art, a movement that developed in the U.S.S.R. and the West in the 1970s and 1980s. Other practitioners of sots-art include the poets Lev Semenovich Rubinshtein, Timur Iur'evich Kibirov, and Igor' Moiseevich Irten'ev; the prose writers Vladimir Georgievich Sorokin and Evgenii Anatol'evich Popov; and the painters Eric Vladimirovich Bulatov, Vitalii Anatol'evich Komar, Aleksandr Danilovich Melamid, Il'ia Iosifovich Kabakov, Aleksandr Kosolapov, and Grisha Bruskin.

Prigov was born on 5 November 1940 in Moscow, where he also grew up. His father was an engineer and his mother a pianist. In 1966 he graduated with a major in sculpture from the Industrial Art Institute (formerly the Stroganov Academy) and subsequently worked in the Central Architectural Administration. He became a...