After completing his compulsory education, Giovanni Galli first worked as a sales representative in cosmetics and perfumes for his family’s business, before moving through a series of precarious jobs. An only child, he began to experience his first psychological disturbances after the death of his parents, which quickly worsened. Institutionalized in 1993 in a specialized facility, he joined La Tinaia the following year, an expressive arts workshop founded in 1975 within the former psychiatric hospital of San Salvi in Florence, where he devoted himself to drawing—a passion that had driven him since childhood (perhaps influenced by his father, an amateur painter).
Close to the style of comic books, most of his compositions cover both the front and back of the sheets: one side is populated with lightly dressed women in suggestive poses alongside military or space machines; the other, likely produced in his residential care home, is generally more restrained.
In the course of a publication project, it was discovered that the work contains texts with violent and sometimes antisemitic content, often concealed within the drawings. To date, no scholarly or critical study has been conducted on this aspect of the work. Consequently, its dissemination, without the necessary contextualization and precautions, raises significant concerns.