Renato Casaro obit

Renato Casaro, Famed Italian Designer of Movie Posters, Dies at 89

He created artwork for ‘A Fistful of Dollars,’ ‘Conan the Barbarian’ and more, then made a comeback with ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.’ 

He was not on the list.

Renato Casaro, the Italian designer of movie posters renowned for the hand-crafted art he created for films including A Fistful of Dollars, Conan the Barbarian and the Rambo features, has died. He was 89.

Casaro died Monday night in a hospital in his native Treviso, Italy, after being admitted days earlier with bronchopneumonia, the Italian news service RAI reported.

Casaro helped put bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map in Hollywood with his poster for the Dino De Laurentiis-produced Conan the Barbarian (1982), and he also designed posters for the actor’s Red Sonja (1985), The Running Man (1987), Total Recall (1990), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and True Lies (1994).

“Schwarzenegger was the perfect man to paint,” he told The Guardian in 2022. “He had a tough expression. His face was like a sculpture. It was a real pleasure for me — I have always had a weakness for heroes.”

Sylvester Stallone, another heroic figure in Hollywood, said Casaro “captured his soul” with posters for his films, which included the Rambo features of 1982, 1985 and 1988, plus Over the Top (1987), Lock Up (1989) and Cliffhanger (1993).

Casaro created posters for lots of spaghetti Westerns early in his career, and one for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), starring Clint Eastwood, helped that movie become a worldwide sensation. He then reunited with the Italian filmmaker for My Name Is Nobody (1973) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

Casaro said the key to a successful poster is to “capture the essential: that moment, that glance, that attitude, that movement that says everything and condenses the entire story. That’s the hard part,” he told The New York Times in 2021. “You can’t cheat. You can’t promise something that isn’t there.”

Born on Oct. 26, 1935, Casaro became fascinated with billboards as a kid and tried to reproduce paintings by such artists as American Norman Rockwell and countryman Angelo Cesselon. When he was a teenager, he drew posters on the walls of the local Garibaldi Cinema in exchange for tickets.

Casaro landed a job as an apprentice lithographer at the Zoppelli printing house and worked for a year as an illustrator for the film ad agency Studio Favalli in Rome before opening his own studio at age 21.

Among his first professional movie posters were for the rerelease of Allan Dwan’s Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and for the 1955 Italian films Romeo & Juliet and Zwei blaue Augen. With the rise of the spaghetti Western, he was drawing about a 100 posters a year.

In 1965, Casaro burst onto the international scene with his poster for John Huston’s epic The Bible in the Beginning … (1966), which ignited a long collaboration with De Laurentiis.

“It was a colossal film,” he told CBS News in a 2022 interview. “My posters were put on billboards on Sunset Boulevard. After that, my phone never stopped ringing.”

One of his favorite pieces was one for Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita (1990), and he also worked with Bernardo Bertolucci on The Last Emperor (1987) and The Sheltering Sky (1990), with David Lynch on Dune (1984) and Wild at Heart (1990) and with Rob Reiner on The Princess Bride (1987) and Misery (1990).

His résumé also included artwork for Flash Gordon (1980), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Blow Out (1981), Octopussy (1983), The NeverEnding Story (1984), Angel Heart (1987), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Wild Orchid (1989) and Dances With Wolves (1990).

After a long period in Spain and Germany, he returned to live and work in his hometown about a decade ago. A documentary about his life, The Last Movie Painter, was released in 2020.

Casaro stopped designing posters in 1998 when studios turned away from hand-drawn artwork to use Photoshop and other digital tools. But then Quentin Tarantino called out of nowhere, looking for posters for a vintage spaghetti Western starring Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) for Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019). 

Tarantino later sent him a signed photo of DiCaprio with one of the posters. “Thanks so much for your art gracing my picture,” he said in an accompanying message. “You’ve always been my favorite.”

Art Department

Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Quentin Tarantino, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, Damon Herriman, Timothy Olyphant, Harley Quinn Smith, Kansas Bowling, Madisen Beaty, Mike Moh, Josephine Valentina Clark, Sydney Sweeney, Michaela Sprague, Margot Robbie, Kayla Radomski, Ryan Ramirez, Margaret Qualley, and Julia Butters in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

7.6

poster designer: Rick Dalton posters (uncredited)

2019

 

Gérard Depardieu and Christian Clavier in Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (1999)

Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar

6.0

poster designer (uncredited)

1999

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994)

True Lies

7.3

poster designer (uncredited)

1994

 

Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger (1993)

Cliffhanger

6.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1993

 

Embeth Davidtz and Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness (1992)

Army of Darkness

7.4

poster designer (uncredited)

1992

 

Anne Parillaud in Innocent Blood (1992)

Innocent Blood

6.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1992

 

K2 (1991)

K2

6.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1991

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Pantellas in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

8.6

poster designer (uncredited)

1991

 

Nicolas Cage, Judge Reinhold, and Erika Anderson in Zandalee (1991)

Zandalee

4.3

poster designer (uncredited)

1991

 

Misery (1990)

Misery

7.8

poster designer (uncredited)

1990

 

Jonathan Brandis, Clarissa Burt, and Kenny Morrison in The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990)

The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter

5.1

poster designer (uncredited)

1990

 

Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves (1990)

Dances with Wolves

8.0

poster designer (uncredited)

1990

 

Christian Slater, Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Balthazar Getty, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Alan Ruck in Young Guns II (1990)

Young Guns II

6.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1990

 

Flight from Paradise (1990)

Flight from Paradise

5.4

poster designer

1990

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall (1990)

Total Recall

7.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1990

 

Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern in Wild at Heart (1990)

Wild at Heart

7.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1990

 

Jeff Kober in The First Power (1990)

The First Power

5.7

poster designer (uncredited)

1990

 

Wild Orchid (1989)

Wild Orchid

4.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1989

 

Ernest Borgnine, Brandon Lee, Debi A. Monahan, and Werner Pochath in Laser Mission (1989)

Laser Mission

3.6

poster designer (uncredited)

1989

 

Lock Up (1989)

Lock Up

6.4

poster designer (uncredited)

1989

 

Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips in Renegades (1989)

Renegades

5.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1989

 

John Neville in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

7.1

poster designer (uncredited)

1988

 

Sylvester Stallone in Rambo III (1988)

Rambo III

5.8

poster designer (uncredited)

1988

 

Tommy Lee Jones, Melanie Griffith, and Sting in Stormy Monday (1988)

Stormy Monday

6.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1988

 

Maniac Cop (1988)

Maniac Cop

6.0

poster designer (uncredited)

1988

 

Io e mia sorella (1987)

Io e mia sorella

6.1

poster designer

1987

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man (1987)

The Running Man

6.6

poster designer (uncredited)

1987

 

Helsinki Napoli All Night Long (1987)

Helsinki Napoli All Night Long

6.1

poster designer

1987

 

Peter Falk and Fred Savage in The Princess Bride (1987)

The Princess Bride

8.0

poster designer (uncredited)

1987

 

Burt Reynolds, Lauren Hutton, and Cliff Robertson in Malone (1987)

Malone

5.8

poster designer (uncredited)

1987

 

Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (1987)

Angel Heart

7.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1987

 

Sylvester Stallone, David Mendenhall, and Rick Zumwalt in Over the Top (1987)

Over the Top

5.8

poster designer (uncredited)

1987

 

Robert Powell in Love Sins (1987)

Love Sins

5.9

poster designer

1987

 

Adriano Celentano and Debra Feuer in Il burbero (1986)

Il burbero

6.2

poster designer

1986

 

Daniel Greene in Hands of Steel (1986)

Hands of Steel

5.3

poster designer (uncredited)

1986

 

Sky Pirates (1986)

Sky Pirates

4.3

poster designer

1986

 

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

Rambo: First Blood Part II

6.8

Video Game

cover illustration

1985

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen in Red Sonja (1985)

Red Sonja

5.1

poster designer (uncredited)

1985

 

Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tom Burlinson in Flesh+Blood (1985)

Flesh+Blood

6.7

poster designer (uncredited)

1985

 

The Care Bears Movie (1985)

The Care Bears Movie

5.6

poster designer (uncredited)

1985

 

Sean Young and Kyle MacLachlan in Dune (1984)

Dune

6.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1984

 

Peter O'Toole, Helen Slater, Hart Bochner, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Peter Cook, Marc McClure, Brenda Vaccaro, and Simon Ward in Supergirl (1984)

Supergirl

4.4

poster designer (uncredited)

1984

 

Robert De Niro, James Woods, William Forsythe, Brian Bloom, Adrian Curran, James Hayden, Rusty Jacobs, and Scott Tiler in Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Once Upon a Time in America

8.3

poster designer (uncredited)

1984

 

Noah Hathaway, Sydney Bromley, Alan Oppenheimer, Tilo Prückner, and Deep Roy in The NeverEnding Story (1984)

The NeverEnding Story

7.3

poster designer (uncredited)

1984

 

Delitto in Formula Uno (1984)

Delitto in Formula Uno

5.8

poster designer

1984

 

Sylvester Stallone in First Blood (1982)

First Blood

7.7

poster designer (uncredited)

1982

 

Delitto sull'autostrada (1982)

Delitto sull'autostrada

5.9

poster designer

1982

 

Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti in Lo so che tu sai che io so (1982)

Lo so che tu sai che io so

6.7

poster designer

1982

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sandahl Bergman in Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Conan the Barbarian

6.9

poster designer (uncredited)

1982

 

Ornella Muti and Adriano Celentano in Madly in Love (1981)

Madly in Love

6.9

poster designer

1981

 

Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure (1981)

Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure

7.1

poster designer

1981

 

Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

The Postman Always Rings Twice

6.6

poster designer (uncredited)

1981

 

Ornella Muti and Adriano Celentano in The Taming of the Scoundrel (1980)

The Taming of the Scoundrel

7.6

poster designer

1980

 

Brian Blessed, Max von Sydow, and Sam J. Jones in Flash Gordon (1980)

Flash Gordon

6.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1980

 

Bud Spencer in Everything Happens to Me (1980)

Everything Happens to Me

5.8

poster designer

1980

 

Terence Hill and Bud Spencer in I'm for the Hippopotamus (1979)

I'm for the Hippopotamus

6.6

poster designer

1979

 

Rossana Di Lorenzo and Alberto Sordi in Il comune senso del pudore (1976)

Il comune senso del pudore

6.0

poster designer

1976

 

Ornella Muti and Vittorio Gassman in Pure as a Lily (1976)

Pure as a Lily

4.5

poster designer

1976

 

The Boss and the Worker (1975)

The Boss and the Worker

6.0

poster designer

1975

 

What's Your Sign? (1975)

What's Your Sign?

5.5

poster designer

1975

 

Due cuori, una cappella (1975)

Due cuori, una cappella

5.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1975

 

Trinity Plus the Clown and a Guitar (1975)

Trinity Plus the Clown and a Guitar

4.7

poster designer

1975

 

Alberto Sordi in While There's War There's Hope (1974)

While There's War There's Hope

6.7

poster designer (uncredited)

1974

 

My Name Is Nobody (1973)

My Name Is Nobody

7.3

poster designer (uncredited)

1973

 

I racconti di Viterbury - Le più allegre storie del '300 (1973)

I racconti di Viterbury - Le più allegre storie del '300

4.9

poster designer

1973

 

Now They Call Him Sacramento (1972)

Now They Call Him Sacramento

4.7

poster designer

1972

 

What Am I Doing in the Middle of a Revolution? (1972)

What Am I Doing in the Middle of a Revolution?

5.8

poster designer

1972

 

Decameron proibitissimo (Boccaccio mio statte zitto) (1972)

Decameron proibitissimo (Boccaccio mio statte zitto)

4.9

poster designer (uncredited)

1972

 

Ettore lo fusto (1972)

Ettore lo fusto

5.5

poster designer

1972

 

I due assi del guantone (1971)

I due assi del guantone

5.3

poster designer

1971

 

Terence Hill in Trinity Is Still My Name (1971)

Trinity Is Still My Name

7.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1971

 

Terence Hill and Bud Spencer in Blackie the Pirate (1971)

Blackie the Pirate

5.2

poster designer

1971

 

Io non spezzo... rompo (1971)

Io non spezzo... rompo

5.8

poster designer

1971

 

I due maghi del pallone (1970)

I due maghi del pallone

5.5

poster designer

1970

 

Edwige Fenech, Franco Franchi, and Ciccio Ingrassia in Don Franco e Don Ciccio nell'anno della contestazione (1970)

Don Franco e Don Ciccio nell'anno della contestazione

5.0

poster designer

1970

 

The Price of Power (1969)

The Price of Power

6.3

poster designer

1969

 

Dove vai tutta nuda? (1969)

Dove vai tutta nuda?

5.2

poster designer

1969

 

Franco, Ciccio e le vedove allegre (1968)

Franco, Ciccio e le vedove allegre

5.1

poster designer

1968

 

Lee Van Cleef in Day of Anger (1967)

Day of Anger

7.0

poster designer

1967

 

Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia in Two Sons of Ringo (1966)

Two Sons of Ringo

6.1

poster designer

1966

 

Peter O'Toole, Stephen Boyd, Ava Gardner, Richard Harris, John Huston, George C. Scott, Ulla Bergryd, and Michael Parks in The Bible in the Beginning... (1966)

The Bible in the Beginning...

6.2

poster designer (uncredited)

1966

 

A Few Dollars for Django (1966)

A Few Dollars for Django

5.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1966

 

Our Men in Bagdad (1966)

Our Men in Bagdad

5.0

poster designer

1966

 

Guy Madison and Ingeborg Schöner in The Mystery of Thug Island (1964)

The Mystery of Thug Island

5.0

poster designer

1964

 

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

A Fistful of Dollars

7.9

poster designer (uncredited)

1964

 

Gary Cooper in Man of the West (1958)

Man of the West

7.0

poster designer (uncredited)

1958

 

Zwei blaue Augen (1955)

Zwei blaue Augen

7.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1955

 

Romeo & Juliet (1955)

Romeo & Juliet

7.5

poster designer (uncredited)

1955

 

Additional Crew

Asterix and the Big Fight (1989)

Asterix and the Big Fight

6.4

title designer: German version

1989

 

Thanks

The Last Movie Painter (2020)

The Last Movie Painter

7.0

special thanks

2020

 

Self

E continuano a mangiare fagioli

Self

Production Unknown

 

Arte Journal (1998)

Arte Journal

4.4

TV Series

Self

2025

1 episode

 

Once Upon A Time In... Treviso

Short

Self

2024

 

Life After the NeverEnding Story (2024)

Life After the NeverEnding Story

8.0

Self

2024

 

Renato Casaro racconta le sue opere e la sua arte dai saloni della sua mostra (Treviso, 2021)

Short

Self

2021

 

The Last Movie Painter (2020)

The Last Movie Painter

7.0

Self

2020

 

Life After Flash (2019)

Life After Flash

6.7

Self

2019

 

The Art of the Blockbuster: An Interview with Renato Casaro

Video

Self

2018