Immediately after World War I, in which he fought with the Alpine Corps, he started studying painting – to which he had been introduced by his uncle Giorgio Belloni – and also took Ambrogio Alciati's courses at the Brera Academy.

In 1924, after graduating, Novello won the Fumagalli Prize at the Brera Biennale, and became a driving force behind the coterie of artists who gathered at the Milanese trattoria Bagutta.

He subsequently participated in many exhibitions at Società della Permanente in Milan, and in some editions of the Venice Biennale (1934, 1936, 1940) and the Rome Quadriennale.

After the outbreak of World War II, Novello fought in the Russian campaign and was deported to Germany after being taken prisoner in Fortezza in 1943.

Novello also made a name for himself as a cartoonist: a collection of his strips, mostly designed as a single rectangular panel with a title on top and a commentary at the bottom, were collected in the volume La guerra è bella ma scomoda (1929) (with a text by his journalist friend Paolo Monelli); Il signore di buona famiglia (1934); and Che cosa dirà la gente (1937).