About

Astéri Contemporary, founded in London by Florence Woodfield Morais and Claudio Ribeiro Krause in August 2026, is a project-based art gallery dedicated to championing exceptional emerging, mid-career and established artists from the United Kingdom and Brazil. Our programme, built around regular exhibitions and participation in projects and art fairs in the UK, Europe and Brazil, seeks to forge meaningful connections with collectors, institutions and audiences in these regions.

 

Astéri Contemporary champions work by artists who explore the various dimensions of human experience, giving form to the deepest structures of the human imagination, whilst honouring the delicacy and preciousness of the natural world in which human life unfolds. 

 

We wish to serve a new and positive consciousness that explores human capacity and human flourishing within a sustainable and equal world. Through art, we seek to serve the necessary breaking down of old construsts that seek to maintain divisions between the so-called 'new world' and 'old world'; instead, championing work that exalts the potential of art as fundamentally beyond all boundaries of country or creed. Exceptional work has a force all its own, that can travel beyond human-made boundaries.  Astéri Contemporary champions artists who are capable of making this imaginative connection with the wider world and have the highest expectations of their own work and their own trajectory within a global context, whether they be self-taught or academicians, making work in the Amazon rainforest, or within the concrete embrace of a metropolis.

 

Art has a unique ability to give voice, vision and testimony to the issues and consciousness of the time in which it is made, and as such plays its unique and valuable role in human history. Humanity finds itself at a unique juncture in time, in which Art is more vital than ever. It is with this overarching belief in the timeless and universal importance of Art that we present exceptional works to our clients. 

  • FOUNDERS

    Florence Woodfield Morais, Co-Founder, Artistic Director

    Florence Woodfield Morais

    Co-Founder, Artistic Director

    Florence Woodfield Morais is a gallerist and curator with over 13 years professional experience in the art world. Having begun in the contemporary art market as a curator and art writer both in London and Rio de Janeiro, she began working for Christie’s London in 2013. Having spent 6 years working with Impressionist and Modern Art, both at Christie’s and later at Stern Pissarro Gallery in St James’, London, she returned to contemporary art in 2021 when she was appointed Curator (and subsequently Associate Director) of the Estate of British-Burmese artist Barry Kamen (1963-2015). In 2025 she spent a formative period as acting Executive Director of Kupfer, London.

     

    Through her work on establishing the estates of artists Shelagh Wakely and Barry Kamen, she has gained specialist expertise in the running and management of artists' estates. The area of artists' Estate management, an important but often hidden and opaque part of the art world ecosystem, represents a new area of art historical scholarship and has an increased importance in the art world, as gallerists and institutions seek to reveal stories and practises that have been historically overlooked by the traditional art 'canon'. 

     

    In 2014, she had a 'lightbulb moment' when seeing the seminal exhibition of Latin American abstract art at the Royal Academy (London) entitled 'The Geometry of Hope'.  In 2015, she completed her MA in Art History (Distinction) with a focus on Brazilian Modernism. After over a decade of spending formative periods in the Northeastern region of Brazil, she has a specialist interest in artists from this region.

  • Claudio Ribeiro Krause, Co-founder, Director of Communications & Cultural Partnerships

    Claudio Ribeiro Krause

    Co-founder, Director of Communications & Cultural Partnerships

    Claudio Ribeiro Krause, based in Germany, is a business strategist, communications consultant and filmmaker with over 20 years of international experience. Until 2025, he served as Director of External Relations at Fairtrade International in Germany and was a member of UNESCO’s Advisory Committee, contributing to the development and delivery of the UNESCO Charter for Fair Culture in 2024. His work as a filmmaker and documentarian focuses on art and culture, as well as socio-political issues and themes related to sustainability.

    He holds a degree in Communication and Design from the Art Institute in the United States, a bachelor’s degree in Law from PUC in Brazil, and a master’s degree in International Relations from the Global Campus of Human Rights in Italy, with further training in the management of international organisations at the University of Geneva. He has also served as a lecturer on the Master’s programme in Brand Management and Communication at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Milan.