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# Russian Povera
- URL: https://www.merenzon.com/russian-povera/
- Published: 2026-10-31T15:57:40.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-31T16:02:56.000Z
- Author: Ilya Merenzon
- Tags: Books, Projects

[*Russian Povera: Art That Makes Trash Monumental*](https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Povera-Alexander-Nazaryan-ebook/dp/B004QWZA26/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=1X9IL2VW7HG7H&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.07x%5F1MVxIiafFDSvbjell4QaAzVNH1JzDSdmSB7eMiXGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.9xzK6sWeaa%5FwPQtepJld2Z9fdMRZZAYBlDqUw%5FDaN%5Fs&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=Russian+povera&qid=1793462091&sprefix=russian+pover%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-1&ref=merenzon.com) is a book I produced with a preface and writing by Alexander Nazaryan, published by Russia! Books in 2010\. It was made under the guidance of Marat Guelman and documents his *Russian Povera* exhibition, the show that opened the Perm cultural project in 2008.

The project itself was an unusual experiment: Perm, a closed military-industrial city in the Urals, decided to reinvent itself through contemporary art. Guelman turned the Stalin-era river station into the PERMM museum, and the governor’s ambition was for Perm to become a [European capital of culture](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/travel/perm-russias-emerging-cultural-hotspot.html?ref=merenzon.com). 

*Russian Povera* was the first of those shows and, by attendance and press, one of the most successful contemporary art exhibitions in 21st-century Russia. The concept borrowed its name from Italian Arte Povera, the post-war, post-fascist movement that worked with poor materials — but Guelman’s version was post-Soviet. The artists (Leonid Sokov, Haim Sokol and others) make work out of trash, scrap and found objects: a tower of soap bars in a tin washtub, a dollar sign cut from rusted metal, a Suprematist composition assembled from bread and sausage. The point was not scarcity for its own sake. It was that a country that had lived through totalitarianism and then collapse had developed its own language for making the discarded monumental, and that language deserved to be taken seriously as a movement rather than a quirk.

The book collects the works from that first exhibition, with Nazaryan’s framing of what Russian Poor Art is and, more usefully, what it isn’t: not the art of oligarch collections, not Fabergé, not the official story. It remains, as far as I know, the only English-language record of the show.

Book was designed by [Dima Barbanel](https://dimabarbanel.com/?ref=merenzon.com).