Revelatory potential of the word in the light of D.A. Prigov's “Stikhogrammy”

The role of the word in totalitarian regimes is crucial, as governments use it to control the masses and to create their own truth and reality. What lies behind this is complete void, which becomes the ground for the Conceptualist movement focusing on the relationship between subject and language. D.A. Prigov is one of the most prominent representatives of conceptualism. His Stikhogrammy, published for the first time in 1985, can be positioned at the junction of verbal and visual art and, combining word and image, they reveal the truth behind the discourse made by Soviet power, by classical literature and the mainstream. The purpose of this article is to show, on the basis of several selected stikhogrammy, the attitude of D.A. Prigov towards the loss of values and how this loss becomes the basis of the project to create a Gesamtkunstwerk.