Board of Directors
Clara Reynardus de Villanueva - President & CEO
Clara was born in New York City and moved to Puerto Rico at the age of 10 where she found her passion for art. This passion for art has led her to be who she is today.
Clara earned her Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and an MBA from University of South Florida (USF) and holds a Graduate Certificate in Management of Non-Governmental and Nonprofit Organizations (GCNM) from USF’s School of Public Affairs.
Currently she serves as the Senior Director of Advancement for the Judy Genshaft Honors College and USF Libraries. Clara leads the strategic fundraising efforts to secure five-to-eight-figure philanthropic support and is a key advisor to the deans.
Since joining USF Advancement in 2019, she has leveraged her executive skills and communication experience in multicultural donor engagement and outreach. Her commitment extends to significant volunteer leadership roles, including presidential appointments within the university and service to numerous nonprofit organizations in the community at large.
A lifelong fine artist, Clara's works are featured in public and private collections nationwide. In the 1990s Clara began supporting artists of the generation of the 1980s arriving from Cuba. She began collecting their work and developing lifelong friendships with this community of artists. Works from her collection are featured in the book Artists in Purgatory.
Clara resides in Sarasota with her husband Roberto and two unruly dogs.
Jorge E. Reynardus
Jorge Reynardus was born in 1944 in Panama, to a Panamanian father and a Cuban mother. He was raised and educated in Cuba; fleeing the country in 1961 bound for the United States. He studied at the Harvard Business School and is considered a pioneer in the world of Hispanic advertising. In 1991, he founded a leading advertising agency in New York and today he stands prominently among collectors of Cuban art.
The idea for this book originated from his relationship with the artist Carlos Cárdenas and hopes it becomes an essential instrument for the promotion of Cuban art created outside of the island.
In 2012, Reynardus founded the non-profit Cuban Art Alliance with the intent to highlight these artistic creators and their works.
His collection is one of the most representative of the work of Cuban artists who immigrated after 1989, or of the post Perestroika generation.
The collection is a work in progress that continues to grow , enrich and nurture Cuban Art. Because of the array of amazing artists that could not be included in this collection, a second volume may be necessary in the very near future.
Ruben Mendoza
Ruben Mendoza was born in 1967 in Havana, Cuba. Ruben studied Fine Arts and worked at the prestigious Taller René Portocarrero, founded by Also Menendez, for seven years. In 1991, Ruben left Cuba for Mexico and the same year decided to exile in the United States. In 1995, he started working at Reynardus & Moya as an art director.
After working for over 15 years under Reynardus's leadership, Ruben was a partner at Creative Bridge Advertising for seven years and then founded The Ingenio Marketing in 2015, specializing in multicultural marketing and advertising. In 2018, Ruben became the Executive Director of Brand Marketing at People en Español. Following the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-2020, Ruben left People en Español to reinvent The Ingenio.
Ruben is also an elected trustee for the Board of Education of West New York, New Jersey. Ruben has served his school district since 2017.
Ruben has been a collaborator in Jorge Reynardus' endeavors for decades. Ruben finds purpose in promoting the work of Cuban artists around the world who – as Reynardus says – were living in a purgatory for not playing by the rules of the Cuban government's institutions.