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.
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Gattai's father, Ernesto Gattai, was an anarchist and came from the region of Veneto, following the social anarchist experiment called Colônia Cecília.