Acción de arte

de Patricia Artundo

Ramón Gómez Cornet (Santiago del Estero, 1898 - Buenos Aires, 1964) was a representative artist of the local avant-garde, which destroyed most of his life work. There is a difficulty in being able to analyze his work "Acción de arte" (1921) in the context of the plastic production of an artist who, in objective terms, is non-existent and of which only one other example is known. The oil painting over wood (64 x 54 cm) titled Art Action was made the year of his first exhibition in in the no longer existing Chandler Art Gallery (Buenos Aires) and the criticism it received was devastating. The artist, little known beyond the honorary title of "precursor of national modern painting", after being rejected burned almost everything he had produced until then. This piece is one of the two that survive from that exhibition that comprised mostly oils with cubist and Fauvist references. The other work is a self-portrait with his eyes in white, which is part of a private collection, not accessible to the public.