Nataliya Zlydneva was born in 1952 in Russia. She is a professor, PhD (hab.) in Art History, head of the culture history department at the Institute for Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences and Leading research fellow at the State Institute for Art Studies (Moscow).

She graduated from the Moscow State University 1974, and took her post-graduate study at the State Institute for Art Studies 1979, Moscow. Obtained scholarships at the Belgrade (1976-1977) and the Toronto (1996) universities. Lectured at the Washington& Lee University, Lexington (VA, USA); the Estonian Academy of Art (Tallinn); the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland); the Moscow State conservatory P. I. Tchaikovsky.

Nataliya Zlydneva served as an editor of non-fiction and a translator from English, Serbian/Croatian, Polish. Published around 300 research publications on visual semiotics, Russian avant-garde in art and literature, the Balkan culture. Her latest monograph was Visual Narrative: the Mythopoetic Approach (Moscow: Indrik, 2013, 362 pp., in Russian).