In the early 1920s he studied with well-known avant-garde artists from Futurist circles such as Matiushin and Tufanov and Terentiev, at the newly formed GInHuK state arts school (headed up by Kazimir Malevich).

Together Kharms and Vvedensky, along with several other young writers, actors, and artists, staged various readings, plays, and cabaret-style events in Leningrad in the late 1920s.

Most of his works (most notably the novel Murderers, you are fools) were for ever lost in the chaos of the war and as the result of the atmosphere of the period: people would destroy any doubtful manuscripts in their possession as incriminating evidence.

The archive itself was saved by Yakov Druskin [ru], close friend of both poets, who, in the middle of the most deadly winter of Leningrad blockade, came to the abandoned and sealed apartment of arrested Kharms, removed the papers and preserved them all along.

His idiosyncratic, morbidly humorous, and linguistically innovative work has slowly begun to be translated into English and anthologized with other OBERIU writers.