Simafra

Riccardo Prosperi, also known as Simafra, lives and works in his hometown Florence. He began painting in 2000, working for a Florentine workshop of restaurateurs and simultaneously studying with professor Ottavio Troiano. Since 2004 he took part in his first competitions and group exhibitions around Tuscany and in a few years he began to exhibit in Italy and abroad.

Between 2008 and 2010 Simafra lived in Paris and later in Germany, working at same time with many galleries: in 2009 with Ken’s Art Gallery in Florence, the following year with Galerie Golkar in Bonn and with the Infantellina Contemporary gallery in Berlin. In 2012 he participated in Art Arsenal, the international biennial of Kiev and he founded in Florence La Bottega Moderna, an indipendent cultural space that doubled up as the artist’s studio.

2013 saw him often committed in London: there he took part in his first english group show, Odds & Sods, at Moor House Art Gallery, and later he exhibited at the Cadogan Contemporary gallery. For two years he also worked with the Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart in Paris, with which he participated in numerous fairs around Europe. The same gallery hosted his first show in Paris in March 2015. The same year he presented the project Le Quattro Stagioni a Palazzo Panichi in Pietrasanta; four canvases of monumental size, that later in 2015 were on display also in the prestigious context of Palazzo Gianfigliazzi Bonaparte in Florence.

Since 2016 he collaborates with Maddox Gallery in Mayfair,  and Galleria Russo in Rome- Istanbul. Recently he has worked on his first site-specific installation, entitled Autostima, on display within the group exhibition Ecosistemi at the Biagiotti Progetto Arte Foundation in Florence. His works are housed in prestigious national and international collections.