Simkha Simkhovitch was born on 9 May 1885 in the town of Novozybkov, Chernigov Province (now Bryansk Region). In 1905 he entered the Odessa Art School which recommended him to the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In September 1911 Simkhovitch was accepted to the Academy of Arts with a probation period, however several months later he was excluded because of the three-percent restriction on the share of Jewish students. In 1913 he re-entered the Academy of Arts as a non-credit student and in 1922 graduated from it without presenting a graduation work.

In 1919 Simkhovitch took part in the Great Russian Revolution contest and won the first prize. Later, his works presented for the competition were exhibited in St. Petersburg and in 1922 at the International Book Fair in Florence.

In the mid-1920s Simkhovitch moved to the United States, where he became a well-known painter. American art magazines reproduced his still lifes, landscapes, portraits, genre and circus scenes. In New York Simkhovitch cooperated with Marie Sterner Gallery where he had his first personal exhibition in 1927. This and subsequent exhibitions organised by Marie Sterner in 1928, 1929 and 1931, as well as the exposition in the Middletown Gallery in 1940 were highly praised by The Art News magazine.

Simkhovitch was a member of the Brooklyn Society of Artists and in the 1930s he lectured at his own studio. In 1932 he was awarded the Second Harris Prize and a bronze medal from the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1933 the Third Prize from the Worcester Art Museum.

Simkha Simkhovitch died in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1949.

Simkhovitch’s works are held by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the National Museum in Kraków and in private collections.