After the closure of the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris, where he presented the sculpture entitled El pueblo español tiene un camino que conduce a una estrella [The Spanish People Have a Path that Leads to a Star], Alberto Sánchez was sent to Moscow by the Spanish Republican Government to take charge of the education of children who had been evacuated to Russia. When the Spanish Civil War came to an end he remained in the Russian capital as a political exile. He resumed oil painting and collaborated with several theater companies but the artistic directives established by the Soviet regime prevented him from further developing his creative potential.

With the political openness brought about by Khrushchev’s government around 1956, Alberto continued his activity as a sculptor, recovering some ideas from 1937 such as the “active hollow” and his work with iron sheet. He also returned to the motif of the mujer castellana [Castilian woman] in a series of works evoking qualities that range from realism to lyrical abstraction.

In parallel, he produced a series of sculptural drawings that can be considered sketches for possible sculptures or autonomous works, as in the case of this silhouette of a Castilian woman.