During his studies he met many exponents of the Turin intellectuals of the time, such as Augusto Monti, Lalla Romano, Leone Ginzburg, Cesare Pavese, Norberto Bobbio, Massimo Mila and Ludovico Geymonat.

By his choice, works by Herman Melville and Franz Kafka, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill and James Joyce, as well as Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, entered Italy for the first time.

[1] His association the Turin group of Justice and Freedom gathered in the editorial staff of the magazine Cultura published by Einaudi and which included, among others, Carlo Levi and Cesare Pavese, caused his arrest in May 1935 which occurred following the denunciation by the writer Pitigrilli.

[4] In this period he collaborated with RAI with the cultural radio program Terza pagina, and with the Turin newspaper La Stampa, with articles on French literature and Italian decadentism.

On that occasion, the group of left-wing independents was formed for the first time in Parliament and Antonicelli was a member of the Defense, Public Education and Supervision commissions for radio and television broadcasts.

[6] His library, made up of over forty thousand volumes, was donated to the Livorno Port Company, where the Franco Antonicelli Foundation was founded for its valorisation.