Zélia Gattai

Zélia Gattai Amado de Faria (July 2, 1916 – May 17, 2008) was a Brazilian photographer, memoirist, novelist and author of children's literature, as well as a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Gattai wrote 14 different literary works, including children's books and her own personal memoirs have been widely published. Zélia Gattai was born in São Paulo city in the neighborhood of Paraíso, state of São Paulo, on July 2, 1916, to a family of Italian immigrant. Gattai's father, Ernesto Gattai, was an anarchist and came from the region of Veneto, following the social anarchist experiment called Colônia Cecília that sought to create an anarchist community in the Brazilian jungle. Her father was arrested in 1938 due to political oppression under the Vargas Estado Novo regime. Gattai lived in Paraíso, São Paulo for her entire adolescence.In the 1930s, Zélia Gattai entered the intellectual and social circles of the modernists of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, becoming a friend of personalities such as Oswald de Andrade, Lasar Segall, Tarsila do Amaral, Mário de Andrade, Rubem Braga, Zora Seljan, Paulo Mendes de Almeida, Carlos Lacerda, Aldo Bonadei, Vinícius de Moraes and others. At the age of 20, Zélia Gattai married Communist militant Aldo Veiga and had her first child, Luís Carlos Veiga, with him. Their marriage ended after eight years and Gattai ended up falling in love with writer and communist Jorge Amado. The new couple decided to live together in 1945 and had their first child, João Jorge Amado, together in 1946.