Biography

Life for international fine artist Duda Penteado has been a series of spiritual and intellectual partnerships. He was born in 1968 to family of educators and politicians who were well acquainted with the power of the arts. Growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a cosmopolitan city of European, American and Brazilian influence, Duda was exposed early on to an eclectic group of global artists and performers.

In 1996, shortly after arriving in New York City, Duda began working with the late Sheila Marbain, an experienced and respected master printer who worked with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1999, he received the Urban Artist Fellowship Award from the Institute for Civil Society to complete an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont in the United States. 

Duda has  done extensive community utilizing the arts, both in the New York Metro Area,and abroad, for over a decade. To that effect, he has received many grants for the continuation and expansion of his work, from sources as diverse as the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Goldman Sachs Group. Duda also has received many awards in recognition of his work. In 2003, the late Glenn Cunningham,then Jersey City's mayor, presented Duda with a Key to the City. In the same year ,he was named a Spacial Guest for Artistic Achievement & Commitment to Youth from the YMCA of Greater  New York. Duda also received the Community Service Golden Age Award from the Latino Gerontological Center in 2005, in New York , and an Industry Service Award from Dress for Success of Hudson County, NJ in 2007. Most recently , he received the 2009 Humanitarian Award from the Hudson County Chapter of the American Conference on Diversity, and " The Jewel of JK" Juscelino Kubitschek Award  at United Nations , New York.

Duda has been featured on UPN 9, CN8, Channel 47, NBC and FOX. His work, including his first book of fine art, Beauty for Ashes (2003), has been featured on Manhattan Connection, internationally throughout Brazil, Portugal, and in the United Kingdom through the GNT network.

Since 2005, Duda has been exhibiting and presenting the Beauty for Ashes Project, which is based on the events of 9/11. He has traveled to Washington, D.C., Spain, and Brazil, and worked with students from universities throughout the United States. In 2007, Duda was named Middlebury College’s Visiting Twilight Scholar, and in 2008, the Beauty for Ashes Memorial, a mixed-media assemblage Duda created, was donated to New Jersey City University by the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute of Washington, D.C. 

Duda’s most recent project, another joint venture with students, Global HeART Warming, is locatedat St. John's Recreation Center in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.  It is a 100 x 72 foot mural he was commissioned to create by the CITYarts Foundation to raise awareness about climate change among youth worldwide. CityARTS has been creating public artworks in New York City for over 40 years.

“Philosophically, my mission as an artist is to empower and to create dialogue about difficult issues,” he says. “To have skill, determination, and inspiration is not enough. A great artist has the ability to capture the imagination of future generations and say something of direct relevance to them. In my case, my art pieces are not an end in and of themselves, but a means of arriving at a fundamental human truth: the struggle of the carnal and the divine in our lives.”

He currently resides in Jersey City with his wife Rozani, his daughter Rossana, and his granddaughter, Sariah.