De Felice was born in Torre Orsina, a small town on the hills around Terni.
De Felice alternated lessons and artistic activity with many personal exhibitions.
There he met Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Kees van Dongen, Ossip Zadkine, Mark Tobey and Constantin Brâncuși.
In 1977 he was invited to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, for a conference on Orneore Metelli, a "painter-shoemaker" from Terni, and father of the Naïve Italian movement, whose art had become famous thanks to De Felice's work.
He spent the last years of his life in the quiet of his house on the hills of Torre Orsina, where he died on June 14, 1996.