Dmitry Prigov studied sculpture at Moscow's Stroganov Institute for the Applied Arts. In the 1970s he became one of the leaders and theoreticians of the Russian conceptual art and literature movement. He was one of the founders of the Moscow School of Conceptualism.
He is the author of several plays, including Catharsis, I'm Playing Concertina(1975) and The Black Dog (1974), and has directed and acted in numerous stage productions, such as The Mantra of High Russian Culture (1999), Pushkin (1999) and The Flight over the Snow-Covered Expanse, among others. He has also performed, as a musician, with jazz and classical musicians in various countries.
His novels, books of poems and essays about literature, art and culture have been translated into various languages. He has been awarded the Pushkin and Pasternak literary prizes. Since the mid-1980s he has taken part in various solo and one-man shows around the world. He was awarded the visual arts prize of the Germany Arts Academy (DAAD) and first prize in the Bienalle der Papierkunst (Düren, Germany, 1998).
