Thursday, October 2, 2025

Remembering Renato Casaro

Renato Casaro passed away recently, and though I never knew his name as a child, I realize now how deeply he influenced me. His brush was a constant presence in my youth, even if it was invisible to me at the time. His posters hung in movie theaters, graced VHS covers in rental shops, and stared back at me from magazine ads for the next big release. He was shaping my imagination before I ever learned to speak of “art” as something you found in a museum.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the movie poster was not just marketing—it was myth-making. Like the cover of a book, it was the singular image that prepared you for the world inside. Casaro excelled at this. He could distill the atmosphere of a film into one unforgettable tableau. Conan the Barbarian was not just Arnold Schwarzenegger posing with a sword; it was myth and muscle, the echo of an ancient saga. The NeverEnding Story was not merely a child on a flying creature; it was the embodiment of imagination itself, a portal into the infinite. The Last Emperor condensed history and spectacle into a vision of a boy dwarfed by empire.

Casaro’s compositions carry a painterly grandeur that still resonates with me. He understood balance and scale: the lone figure dwarfed by sky, the intimate detail set against sweeping backgrounds, the heroic gesture frozen at its most powerful beat. His brushwork wasn’t literal realism—it was heightened reality, leaning into the archetypes that cinema itself tried to awaken. A Casaro poster didn’t just tell you what the movie was about, it told you what it meant.

For a boy growing up in rural America, far from the walls of the Louvre or the halls of the Met, these posters were my museum. Casaro, along with artists like Drew Struzan, made art accessible in the most unexpected way. Every time I walked into a theater, I was greeted not just by entertainment but by painted worlds that hinted at something larger: beauty, danger, heroism, mystery. These images were my first gallery—unframed, unguarded, pasted on walls where anyone could stand and stare.

Looking at his career in retrospect, the scope is staggering. Casaro painted for Octopussy (1983), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Red Sonja (1985), The Name of the Rose (1986), Innerspace (1987), The Last Emperor (1987), Rambo III (1988), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Misery (1990), Cliffhanger (1993), Little Buddha (1993), and even later contributed retro-style posters for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). And that’s only a fraction of the more than 700 posters he produced. To leaf through the full list of his works is like revisiting the cinematic canon of my youth and seeing it refracted through his brush.

Casaro is sometimes called “the last movie painter.” That phrase carries with it a certain melancholy. In an age of digital collage and Photoshop composites, his art reminds us of the power of the painted image to capture not just a likeness but a mood, a memory, a myth. His work is part of why I love art today. Even though I never stepped foot in a major museum until much later, I had Casaro’s museum all along—in the theater lobbies of small-town America, on the cardboard sleeves of VHS tapes, in the ephemera of cinema.

When I think back now, I realize his influence was quiet but profound. He gave me my first encounters with grandeur. He gave me images that still live in the theater of my imagination. And perhaps that is the best legacy an artist can have: to shape the dreams of those who never even knew his name.

Selected Posters

  1. My Name Is Nobody (1973)

  2. Quadrophenia (1979)

  3. Flash Gordon (1980)

  4. Blow Out (1981)

  5. Conan the Barbarian (1982)

  6. Tenebrae (1982)

  7. La casa stregata (1982)

  8. Grand Hotel Excelsior (1982)

  9. Octopussy (1983)

  10. Never Say Never Again (1983)

  11. The NeverEnding Story (1984)

  12. Conan the Destroyer (1984)

  13. Dune (1984)

  14. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

  15. The Cotton Club (1984)

  16. Joyeuses Pâques (1984)

  17. Les Morfalous (1984)

  18. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

  19. Red Sonja (1985)

  20. Flesh and Blood (1985)

  21. Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985)

  22. The Name of the Rose (1986)

  23. Angel Heart (1987)

  24. Innerspace (1987)

  25. The Princess Bride (1987)

  26. The Last Emperor (1987)

  27. The Sicilian (1987)

  28. Cherry 2000 (1987)

  29. House II: The Second Story (1987)

  30. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

  31. Rambo III (1988)

  32. The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990)

  33. Misery (1990)

  34. The Sheltering Sky (1990)

  35. The Two Jakes (1990)

  36. Total Recall (1990)

  37. Fire, Ice and Dynamite (1990)

  38. The Hot Spot (1990)

  39. Air America (1990)

  40. Desperate Hours (1990)

  41. Narrow Margin (1990)

  42. Spaced Invaders (1990)

  43. The First Power (1990)

  44. Bei mir liegen Sie richtig (1990)

  45. City Slickers (1991)

  46. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

  47. Wild Orchid II: Two Shades of Blue (1991)

  48. K2 (1991)

  49. Lucky Luke (1991)

  50. The Invisible Wall (Il muro di gomma) (1991)

  51. Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

  52. City of Joy (1992)

  53. Captain Ron (1992)

  54. Innocent Blood (1992)

  55. Shadow of the Wolf (1992)

  56. Army of Darkness (1992)

  57. Little Buddha (1993)

  58. Cliffhanger (1993)

  59. Botte di Natale (1994)

  60. The Star Maker (L’uomo delle stelle) (1995)

  61. Celluloide (1996)

  62. Jack Brown Genius (1996)

  63. Serial Lover (1998)

  64. Astérix et Obélix contre César (1999)

  65. Octopus (2000)

  66. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

  67. A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – Italian re-release artwork

  68. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) – Italian re-release artwork

  69. The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) – Italian poster

  70. The Ipcress File (1965) – Italian poster

  71. Navajo Joe (1966) – Italian poster

  72. Caliber 9 (Milano calibro 9) (1972)

  73. Solaris (1972) – Italian poster

  74. To Love Ophelia (Per amare Ofelia) (1974)

  75. The Boss and the Worker (Il padrone e l’operaio) (1975)

  76. Delitto sull’autostrada (1982)

  77. Vacanze in America (1984)

  78. Opera (1987)

  79. Cronaca di una morte annunciata (1987)

  80. The Osterman Weekend (1983)

  81. The Cotton Club (1984) – alternate Italian campaign

  82. Amadeus (1984/85) – Italian campaign

  83. Futureworld (1976) – Italian poster

  84. Being There (1979) – Studio Casaro campaign

  85. Papillon (1973) – Studio Casaro campaign

  86. Crazy Joe (1974) – Studio Casaro campaign

  87. Il coltello di ghiaccio (1972) – Studio Casaro campaign

  88. King of New York (1990) – Italian poster

  89. The Sicilian (1987) – alternate art

  90. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) – Italian poster

  91. The Man from Colorado (1948) – repertory Italian poster

  92. Rio Grande (1950) – repertory Italian poster

  93. The Magnificent Seven (1960) – repertory Italian poster

  94. The Great Dictator (1940) – repertory Italian poster

  95. The Lost Volcano (1950) – repertory Italian poster

  96. Momo (1986) – Italian poster

  97. Grand Canyon (1991) – Italian poster

  98. The Two Lives of Mattia Pascal (1985) – Italian poster

  99. The Sicilian Clan (1969) – Italian re-release poster

  100. The Name of the Rose (1986) – alternate Italian art


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