It is not known since when Dimiter's obsession to pastel dates back - whether during his student years; or after the visits to the Louvre when wife Russalia stopped in front of a Degas' portrait of her fellow ballet dancer; or after the two stood enchanted in front of Da Vinci's at the National Gallery in London. Some of the world's most fa-mous pastels were created by the im-pressionist Degas. In impressionists' pastels colour appears to carry the light and the lightness. Di Kiro often said that colour makes reality live. Impres-sionism was faced by total denial by the defenders if social realism in art. Degas was one of Kirov's idols. Not surprisingly in the early 1960s DiKiro was accused in impressionism by the establishment critics.
Kirov thought Paris, with its Morris Kempten de Latur and Degas, was the motherland of pastel. Not least, he admired Picasso's pure colour pastels - red, yellow, blue, green and violet spots with no intermediary tones.
In any case, many of the portraits created by Kirov were pastel. It is interesting to observe him while mak-ing a portrait: it feels like the draw-ing is born from the touch of his fin-gers to the cardboard. He prefers the soft pastels, but has worked with solid ones as well. These portraits, each full of individuality, testify both of his high technical skill and talent; and of his tendency to reveal the personality of the model.