As far as I understood, one possibility to implement swipe-to-dismiss for RecyclerView with a background below the swiped item (as in many google apps) is to implement a simple callback for the ItemTouchHelper and draw the background in the method onChildDraw.
This is my implementation:
ItemTouchHelper.SimpleCallback simpleItemTouchCallback = new ItemTouchHelper.SimpleCallback(0, ItemTouchHelper.RIGHT) {
    // create objects once and avoid allocating them in the onChildDraw method
    Drawable background;
    Drawable icon;
    int iconMargin;
    boolean initialized;
    private void init() {
        background = new ColorDrawable(Color.RED);
        icon = ContextCompat.getDrawable(mAppContext, R.drawable.ic_delete_white_24dp);
        iconMargin = (int) mAppContext.getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.fab_margin);
        initialized = true;
    }
    @Override
    public boolean onMove(RecyclerView recyclerView, RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder, RecyclerView.ViewHolder target) {
        return false;
    }
    @Override
    public void onSwiped(RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder, int swipeDir) {
        // remove swiped item from the list and notify the adapter
        int position = viewHolder.getAdapterPosition();
        mItemList.remove(position);
        mRecyclerViewAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
    }
    @Override
    public void onChildDraw(Canvas c, RecyclerView recyclerView, RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder, float dX, float dY, int actionState, boolean isCurrentlyActive) {
        if (actionState == ItemTouchHelper.ACTION_STATE_SWIPE) {
            if (dX > 0) {
                View itemView = viewHolder.itemView;
                // if viewHolder has been swiped away, don't do anything
                if (viewHolder.getAdapterPosition() == -1) {
                    return;
                }
                if (!initialized) {
                    init();
                }
                // draw background
                int dXSwipe = (int) (dX * 1.05); // increase slightly dX to avoid view flickering, compensating loss of precision due to int conversion 
                background.setBounds(itemView.getLeft(), itemView.getTop(),
                itemView.getLeft() + dXSwipe, itemView.getBottom());
                background.draw(c);
                // draw icon
                int top = (itemView.getTop() + itemView.getBottom() - icon.getIntrinsicHeight()) / 2;
                int left = itemView.getLeft() + iconMargin;
                icon.setBounds(left, top, left + icon.getIntrinsicWidth(), top + icon.getIntrinsicHeight());
                icon.draw(c);
            }
        }
        super.onChildDraw(c, recyclerView, viewHolder, dX, dY, actionState, isCurrentlyActive);
        }
    };
    ItemTouchHelper itemTouchHelper = new ItemTouchHelper(simpleItemTouchCallback);
    itemTouchHelper.attachToRecyclerView(mRecyclerView);
Now, the question is how to animate the views in the background below. An example of this animation can be taken from the google calendar: when events or reminders are swiped, the icon on the left is scaled up accordingly to the amount of the horizontal displacement.
Has anybody idea how to achieve that? Would it be necessary a different approach, maybe with two views in the ViewHolder one on each other as proposed here RecyclerView Swipe with a view below it?