Milos Sikora's Washed Pastels: Erasure as Method

Milos Sikora, born in 1945 in Nesmen, Czechoslovakia, transitioned from making small objects to creating dry pastel works on rice paper or canvas, which he washes and rubs to achieve erasure. His current practice involves aggressively scrubbing his paintings with Marseille soap, reducing animal and landscape motifs to faint traces. A series of 24 pastels on rice paper, shown at Galerie Pascaline Mulliez, depicted lizards, crows, dragonflies, and crowned cranes, all but dissolved into colored haze. Sikora's technique emerged during a trip to India, inspired by watching people wash clothes in a river. He studied at the École des arts et métiers in Prague, worked in advertising and illustration, and initially painted black-dominated compositions before traveling to Ireland, India, and France, where he settled in 1989. His square formats (15–40 cm) defy spectacular strategies, chosen for their difficulty and practicality. Critic Karim Ghaddab, who teaches at the école supérieure d'art et de design in Saint-Étienne, notes that Sikora treats beauty as an indelible stain and an eternally renewed task.