Alberto (1895-1962) - Bird Drinking Water

Alberto Sánchez's exile in the Soviet Union marked one of the most fascinating transformations in 20th-century Spanish art. At the height of his career in Russia, the Toledo-born sculptor did not deny the essence of the Vallecas School, but rather refined it. His forms, once scorched by the Castilian sun, became more stylized under the Moscow cold, acquiring a more austere geometry, but just as organic and rooted in the earth. His figures from this period, often made from modest materials due to the scarcity of metal, retain that verticality of a landmark in the landscape, as if to link the earth to the cosmos.

In this context, "Bird Drinking Water" stands out as a masterpiece of his ability to synthesize life. The work transcends the weight of the material to focus on the dynamism of the gesture: a curved, taut, essential line that captures the precise instant of quenched thirst. This is not a representation of an animal, but the materialization of a vital movement, in which emptiness plays as crucial a role as bronze itself. In this work, Alberto manages to fuse the memory of the bird drinking from a puddle in the Castilian steppe with the formal purity of his mature style, demonstrating that, even far from his native land, his sculpture remained an unbroken dialogue with nature and its mysterious energy.

-"Bird drinking water". 1956-1958

- Patinated metal alloy on wooden base

- Signed on the base

- Numbered 626/1600

- Dimensions: 26.7 x 7 x 11 cm

- Edition D. Jorge L. Lacasa Sancha, Madrid