The Village. 1947

During World War II Valentina Diffine-Christi was a student when the Surikov Institute was evacuated to Samarkand. Away from the capital's authorities, the most talented artists of those years created conditions that allowed young artists, and themselves, to experiment. The artist Viktor Ivanov, who came to know Diffine-Christi when she was a student, said of her work: "Impressionism was a definite step forward in our art - it reached towards the extreme. The shapes almost fade away, and the subject disappears".