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. She was married to internationally famous writer Jorge Amado from 1945 until his death in 2001.

Gattai was born in São Paulo city, state of São Paulo, on July 2, 1916, to a family of Italian immigrants. Gattai's father, Ernesto Gattai, was an anarchist and came from the region of Veneto, following the social anarchist experiment called Colônia Cecília. Her mother, Angelina Da Col, was a Catholic. After the failure of Colônia Cecília, the Gattais moved to São Paulo, where Ernesto Gattai worked as a chauffeur for wealthy families and later as a car mechanic.

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. As a result of the anti-Communist measures by dictator Getúlio Vargas in the late 1930s, Gattai was forced to go into exile with her husband, who was a Communist, soon after her marriage in 1945. She used the opportunity to get a degree in Literature at the Sorbonne, in 1949.

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