In a recent article published by the morning newspaper Folha de São Paulo, journalists Mauricio Meireles and Silas Marti write in detail about the discovery of a personal diary by Brazilian modernist artist Anita Malfatti at the Instituto de Estudios Brasileiros (IEB) of the Universidade de São Paulo, in the very day of the inauguration of a retrospective exhibition by this artist at the Museu de Arte Moderna in the Ibirapuera Park in the city of São Paulo.
According to the archival coordinator of the Instituto de Estudios Brasileiros, Elisabete Ribas, "It is the only personal diary of hers that we know of […] Her most confessional and most memorable records are concentrated in this notebook and in the letters that she exchanged with Mario de Andrade."
In this document, Anita Malfatti comes across as an observant, vain, and critical person who, through a tortuous calligraphy—she learned to write with her left hand because she was born with an atrophied right hand—also offers a rich landscape of the social environment in the São Paulo of the early 20th century."
According to Brazilian researcher Carlos Pires, "This diary is a central document for understanding the development of the cultural field during the 1910s because it was written with a great degree of independence."
More information is available at: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrada/2017/02/1860518-sumido-ha-30-anos-diario-de-anita-malfatti-e-encontrado-por-acaso.shtml