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He was born in Bergamo in 1951. He discovered his artistic talent over the higher studies: after some pictorial experimentation decided to devote himself completely to sculpture and briefly attended the studio of Tarcisio Brugnetti. His first exhibitions date back to the early eighties, subsequent the collaborations with major galleries and art dealers that led him to exhibit, in the following years, in numerous Italian and foreign cities. His work has been the object of attention of critics such as Mario De Micheli, Sergio Zavoli, Vittorio Sgarbi, Elena Pontiggia, Donald Kuspit, Gerard Xurigera, Timothy J. Standring, Wolf Gunther Thiel and Flavio Arens. In 2013 he was appointed member of the Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon.
His first youthful works, in the seventies and eighties were influenced by expressionism, following the study of Greek statuary, art Italian Renaissance and Canova led him to embrace neo-classical styles and the recovery of mythological themes and epic. The meetings with the gallery owner Giuseppe Gastaldelli and critic Mario De Micheli approach him then to the works of the great Italian sculptors of the twentieth century as Arturo Martini, Marino Marini and Emilio Scanavino, which will constitute, together with Giacomo Manzu and Augusto Perez, further sources of inspiration for the evolution of his poetry. Since the mid-nineties, in fact, Riva, without ever betraying the figurative choice, a ceaseless personal research work based on a critical analysis of contemporary society and the role that artists and art are called to play in it. In addition to sculpture, Riva has a passion for drawing: in 2000 he created the Gospels for the jubilee year, the following year then illustrated edition of the Canti by Giacomo Leopardi while in 2003 it was the turn of the Book hours, containing twenty-nine songs of the Psalter translated by David Maria Turoldo (which Riva knew personally in the seventies during the priory of Turoldo at the rectory Abbey of Sant'Egidio in Fontanella), the Ave Maria and seven songs from the New Testament selected by Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, who wrote the introduction and the comments on the texts. The Evangelarium experiences and the Book of Hours also renewed his interest in sacred art, which has expressed itself in the creation, in 2006, a Via Christi polychrome terracotta for the Votive Temple of Bergamo. In recent years have taken on particular importance the creation, in 2011, Anima Mundi, a work depicting a headless angel and placed in Bergamo in the central largo Porta Nuova, the participation, in the same year, at the Venice Biennale and the realization of the exhibition sculptures in the park held in 2012 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Florence.