Antonia Duende was born in Sofia in 1958. In 1984 she graduated in Fine Arts from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. In the time 1990-1995 she participated in a postgraduate course in Art Didactics and art mediation at the Academy of Arts in Berlin and granted a scholarship by the Heinrich-Böll Foundation for this study. In the year 2003 she is appointed teacher for this subject at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. 

Since 1991 she is supervising various art-workshops and conducting classes in Bulgaria, Germany, France, Poland, Thailand, Spain, India.

Selected projects: “Sacred symbols, sacred sounds” together with Nikolay Ivanov – OM, gallery “Bulgaria”, Sofia, Bulgaria (2013); “Glagolitic traces” exhibition of paintings during the days of Bulgarian Culture in Auroville, India (2012); “Five contemporary artists” exhibition of paintings at Hotel Lalit in New Delhi, India (2012); “Layers” with Roman Kissiov, Bulgarian Cultural Center, Berlin (2012); “Artists of the Gallery at Starke Foundation” exhibition at Löwenpalais, Berlin (2012); “Glagolitic traces” exhibition of paintings at gallery Osten in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia (2011) and at the cultural center in Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia (2011); “Glagolitic traces” exhibition of paintings in the City hall of Zagreb, Croatia (2010); at the Elias Canetti Society in Russe, Bulgaria (2010); at the Bulgarian culture Institute in Budapest, Hungary (2010); at the Ministry of Justice in Kiel, Germany; in Centro Cultural de Bellas Artes, Lima, Peru (2010) and many others.

Lives and works in Berlin.                                                                    

"In the project “So Close, So Far” I see an opportunity to communicate through my work the feeling of spiritual affiliation which anyone carries deep inside in his long journey through life. This feeling transforms itself, it grows like a living being and enters the dialogue with other cultures. Then it goes back to his own source enriched by a new communication potential.”