Treviso Celebrates Renato Casaro, Master of Cinema Posters, with Major Retrospective

A comprehensive retrospective of Renato Casaro, the renowned Italian film poster artist, has opened across three museum venues in Treviso, Italy. The exhibition, hosted at the Museo nazionale Collezione Salce—which holds Italy's largest collection of advertising graphics—features 300 posters selected from over 1,000 works, including original pieces and restored versions, along with preparatory sketches and variants. Casaro (born 1935 in Treviso) created posters for iconic films such as Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, "Amadeus," "The Last Emperor," "The Name of the Rose," "The Sheltering Sky," "Sapore di mare," "Dances with Wolves," and "Rambo III." His career began in Treviso making advertising cutouts for local cinemas in exchange for free tickets, then moved to Rome in the mid-1950s for an apprenticeship at Augusto Favalli's studio. He worked with directors including Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe Tornatore, Dario Argento, Ingmar Bergman, Claude Lelouch, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Francis Ford Coppola, and recently Quentin Tarantino commissioned a fake poster for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Casaro adapted to changes by introducing photography and airbrush techniques into poster art. The exhibition is particularly meaningful as Nando Salce, founder of the collection, was the first collector of Casaro's early advertising posters. Casaro now focuses on wildlife art from his time in Africa and Renaissance-style portraits of classic film actors.