- Year
- 1953
- Technique
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 43×58 cm
- Status
- In the Artist's Estate
Painted a decade after the events it recalls, this work reflects the artist's memory of wartime village life - exhausted, dark, and stripped of the simplest conditions of existence. The snow-covered settlement appears almost swallowed by silence: no light in the windows, no visible movement, only low huts pressed into the frozen land.
The restrained palette and heavy sky convey not merely winter, but deprivation. The village seems worn down by hardship, existing without warmth, electricity, or certainty about tomorrow. Small human traces dissolve within the vast whiteness, emphasizing vulnerability and isolation.
Rather than depicting a specific episode, Maltsev preserves an atmosphere remembered from experience - the endurance of rural life during war, when survival itself became a quiet, daily act of resistance.
