He was born in the “El Catalán” ranch near the Catalán stream. In 1939 and thanks to a scholarship, he and his brother Edgardo moved to Montevideo and began their studies with Maestro Joaquín Torres García, with him Alceu acquired a trade, concept and theoretical culture. His studies at Torres García Workshop lasted until 1949.

In the same year of his arrival in the capital, he began his first shipments to national and municipal salons, obtaíning awards and praise and encouragement from crítics. Among the awards received, in 1942, the State Council Award in the National Hall stands out, which allowed him to make a tip through Peru and Bolivia with the brothers Augusto and Horacio Torres, and which put him in contact with pre-Columbian culture.

In 1944 he was part of the Torres García Workshop group that worked on the murals of the Martirené Pavilion ofthe Saint Bois Hospital with the support of the municipality of Montevideo, he founded the “El Molino” workshop, which he directed, and in which all kinds of cultural events were held: teaching, concerts, film sessions. “El Molino” was a meeting point for the Montevideo intelligentsia, as well as Spanish exiles such as Margarita Xirgu and José Bergamín.

In 1962 he became a tenured professor at the Universidad del Trabajo de Montevideo, giving painting and drawing classes there, and in 1963 he received an official mission from the Museo de Bellas Artes del Uruguay to collect bibliographic data. This mission allowed him to travel throughout Europe for a year. Before leaving, he made a tour of South America exhíbiting, among other places, at the Museum Zea (Medellín, Colombia).

In 1974 he settled permanently in Mallorca, without losing contact with Uruguay.

His works can be found, among others, in the National Museum of Visual Arts and the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum in Montevideo, in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, in the Museum of Medellín in Colombia, as well as in tne National Museum of Sao Paulo. . the Lugo Museum, and the St. Petersburg Museum, as well as institutions such as the Government of the Balearic Islands or the Consell Insular de Mallorca. Ribeiro exhibited individually in galleries in the United States, Argentina, Spain, Switzerland, France, Holland, and Colombia. Among the group exhibitions in which he has participated since 1990, the 1992 exhibition “The School of the South, the Torres García Workshop and its legacy”, traveling through the Reina Sofía National Art Museum in Madrid, the M Hintington Art Gallery de Texas, the Museum of Monterey, the Museum ofthe Bronx in New York and the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City, the exhibition at the Cecilia de Torres gallery in New York “55 years of constructivist Wood”, as well as the exhibitions  “The Torres García Workshop”, held at the Sala Dalmau in Barcelona and the Caixa de Tarrasa Cultural Center in 1998, and in 2005, the exhibition” 25 anys de galería “at the Sala Dalmau in Barcelona, both winners of the Association’s award. Catalan of Art Critics as the best exhibitions of the year.