Many considered him a joke and mentally ill, did not publish his poetry in the Soviet Union for a long time, and did not exhibit his works of art. Today, on the other hand, he has become one of the most important personalities in the recent history of Russian art and literature, holding exhibitions in the citadels of Western art – the life of Dmitry Prigov has proved so unusual.
Prigov undoubtedly believed in his role as an artist and subordinated everything else to his life – not for nothing do many art scholars consider his own, Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov’s path to the status of “great Russian poet” to reach the same pantheon with Pushkin, Dostoevsky, as his main art project. Tolstoy, Lermontov and other classics of Russian literature.
Dmitry Prigov’s artistic activity is characterized by his diligence and phenomenal work abilities – during his lifetime he wrote about 36,000 poems, in addition to which he also worked as an artist and sculptor, created installations and performances, filmed films, participated in music projects, created theoretical reflections. To achieve such results, Prigov undertook to write at least one poem every day, creating a special scheme that, in Prigov’s own words, would allow others to continue his work. As a sculptor, Prigov named Henry Moore and Albert Giacomette along with Andy Warhol, Joseph Boise and the German Fluxus movement as his sources of inspiration. Prigov was preoccupied with the problem of monumentalization: how the artist and his work are “stoned” along with general public recognition.
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