Born in Milan, the son of the authorValentino, in 1947 Piccoli founded and directed the stage company "Compagnia del Carrozzone", a company consisting often young actors who held stagings in about two hundredcities in three years. In 1950 he and most of his company moved to Bolzano, where Piccoli founded the Teatro Stabile, which he directed until 1966; in Bolzano, he "put into practice his idea of an anti-realistic theater, founded on the primacy of the poetic language, and on the expressive autonomy of a transfiguring imagination." At the Teatro Stabile he directed seventy four stagings, mainly based on Italian authors.