Ella Fontanals-Cisneros is a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and collector with a passion for art, especially contemporary art and design. Born in Cuba and raised in Venezuela, she began collecting works by Latin American artists in the 1970s and has amassed more than 2. 700 pieces by such renowned artists as Marina Abramovic, Lygia Clark, Los Carpinteros, Ai WeiWei, Carmen Herrera, León Ferrari, Gego, Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Anish Kapoor, Barbara Kruger, Julio Le Parc, Sol Lewitt, Ana Mendieta, Hélio Oiticica, Fischli & o Weiss, Bill Viola among many others.

She has loaned pieces from her collection to a large number of institutions around the world, including the Tate Modern in London, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In 2002 she also created the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation for the Arts (CIFO) whose mission is to promote the understanding and appreciation of the arts and contemporary artists of Latin America through grants, commissioned works, exhibitions, and bilingual publications. Ella Fontanals-Cisneros has written several books on art, but also a novel, Ella soy yo, published earlier this year.