His family moved from Capital Federal to Sarandí in search of a better climate for Norberto’s asthma. Sarandí is an area on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires that, at the time, was virtually in the countryside and had a population mostly of Italian immigrants working the land in small farms; Gómez lived there as a child and as a young man, and there too he started giving expression to his artistic inclination. As an adolescent, he started painting signs for garages and decorations on old trucks (an Argentine art form known as “fileteo”).

It is in Sarandí that, some years later, he sets up his carpenter’s and lettering workshop, which provides him with a livelihood for many years.