Renato Casaro - Italian illustrator and painter "The man who painted cinema"

Renato Casaro (October 26, 1935 – Treviso, September 30, 2025)

Renato Casaro in 2016, during the exhibition dedicated to him at Albissola Comics Albissola Comics

He was an Italian illustrator and painter, known for his posters and film posters as well as his paintings and art prints.

He is considered one of the most important, influential, and innovative Italian film poster designers.

Over the course of his long career, he has created thousands of works dedicated to the seventh art, becoming very popular abroad as well.

Biography

He began his artistic career at the age of 17, at the Garibaldi Cinema in Treviso, where he produced posters for films in progress for free in exchange for admission. Initially, he reproduced and drew inspiration from other illustrators of the time.

In 1953, at the age of 18, he moved to Rome, where he volunteered for a year at Studio Favalli. Just two years later, he opened his first private studio in Cinecittà, becoming the youngest film painter in Italy. His first commission was a poster for a German film about Romeo and Juliet.

He signed his first film illustrations as C. Renè, later switching to R. Casaro.

In 1965 he achieved his first international success thanks to the keyart (posters and playbills) distributed throughout the world for the film The Bible (1966) by John Huston and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, bringing his posters to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood for the first time.

In the following years, he worked with the greats of cinema, including Claude Lelouch, Francis Ford Coppola, Wolfgang Petersen, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luc Besson, Franco Zeffirelli, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and at major production houses in Los Angeles and New York.

His collaboration with Sergio Leone remained particularly strong, for whom he created almost all of his film posters. Particularly famous in Italy are those linked to the Italian Western genre, which have now become cult films, such as A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in America, and all the films related to the duo Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.

In 2019, he was called by director Quentin Tarantino to collaborate on the "fictitious vintage posters" project created specifically for the film Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood.

Over the years, he has also supervised the production of several film posters by his son Claudio. These are distinguished by being signed with the triangular inscription "Casaro C." or simply Claudio Casaro.

In 2024, he designed the poster for the new attraction (Disaster - The Blockbuster Tour) at the Movieland theme park (located in Lazise, ​​in the province of Verona).

The following year, he also designed the poster for the new attraction at the Caneva Aquapark water park (belonging to the same group as Movieland).

During the 2024 Rome Film Fest, Casaro presented an exhibition of his most prestigious posters from his private collection at the Casa del Cinema.

He died on September 30, 2025, at the Ca' Foncello hospital in Treviso, due to bronchopneumonia, at the age of 89. The funeral took place three days later in Treviso Cathedral; as per his wishes, he was cremated.

Style and Technique

Renato Casaro cultivated a passion for drawing from a young age, but the lack of schools and courses initially forced him to become self-taught. His inspirations were other poster illustrators of the time, particularly Norman Rockwell and Angelo Cesselon, whose works he attempted to reproduce to practice and understand their production processes and techniques. His illustrations are created primarily with paintbrushes and airbrushes. He is considered one of Italy's finest airbrush artists.

The media typically used varies by country. The most commonly used paper sizes are A0 and A1, but posters for Italian cinema were often made in sizes 70 x 100 cm, 100 x 140 cm, and 140 x 198 cm. For American cinema, the most commonly used format is 30 x 40 inches (75 x 105 cm).

Awards and recognitions

• 1983 – Winner of the Cinema and Society Award for Best Poster Designer

• 1988 – Golden clapperboard for best poster for Dario Argento's Opera

• 1991 – Golden clapperboard as best poster for Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky

• 1991 –Promo Image Cinema as the best poster for Nikita

• 1992 – Jupiter Awards for Best Poster for Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves

  Works

  
  

Film posters

• (EN) Renato Casaro, Africa,

• (EN) Renato Casaro, Renato Casaro - Movie Art, 

• (EN) Renato Casaro, Renato Casaro - African Impressions.

• (EN) Renato Casaro, African Memories, 

• (DE) Renato Casaro, Gemalter Film Plakate Vvon Renato Casaro, Folkwang/Steidl, 

• Renato Casaro, Renato Casaro - Painted Movies,

• Renato Casaro, Renato Casaro - The art of movie painting, Edizioni Moderna,

  
  

Film

• The last man who painted cinema (2020), regia di Walter Bencini, con Dario Argento, Carlo Verdone, Enrico Vanzina, Federico Mauro e Aurelio De Laurentiis – docufilm, entirely dedicated to the works of Renato Casaro.

  
  

External links

• Sito ufficiale, su casaro-renato-art.com.