From Treviso to New York. Renato Casaro, the great Italian artist of the film poster, conquers the front page of the New York Times which has dedicated an extensive article on his extraordinary artistic parable to him. A journey that led him from his hometown, Treviso, to the Rome of the Dolce Vita and then to Hollywood where he signed the posters of the greatest masterpieces of cinema. Renato Casaro, born in 1935, is considered the last of the great poster designers of the seventh art, the one who was able to translate, drawing it, the soul of a film on a poster. Few tools: pencil, brush and colors to create the magic that the film told with a few signs. At the base a formidable communicative intuition and a rare creative and artistic ability.
The Roman years of the Dolce Vita: "It's wonderful to be young and go and discover this world"
Renato Casaro tells himself to New York Times, accomplice the great exhibition that his city of Treviso has dedicated to him, "The latest poster designer of cinema. Treviso, Rome, Hollywood”And which is mentioned in the article of the prestigious US newspaper. But it is the artist, with his stories, the freshness of his speech and his humor, to occupy the scene. And to remember the fears of his mother against his first move to a big city like Rome. “He thought it was the city of perdition - tells the journalist Elisabetta Povoledo - she cried, she was worried, she said she would lose her son ”.
In the long interview Casaro recalls the Roman years of the Dolce Vita, in a city "Full of life. With many movie stars and tourists filling the elegant restaurants of Via Veneto. Which were out of my reach but where I was trying to sneak in to see who was around. Of course we lived on the margins, but it was wonderful to be young and to go to Rome to discover this world ”.
Many successful films "told" on posters thanks to an extraordinary creative ability
But Rome was only the beginning of a dazzling career of this to say the least "Artisan of art", as it has been defined, who has worked with directors such as Jean-Jacques Annaud, Dario Argento, Marco Bellocchio, Ingmar Bergman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luc Besson, John Boorman, Tinto Brass, Liliana Cavani, Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, Costa-Gavras , Pietro Germi, Claude Lelouch, Ugo Liberatore, Sergio Leone, Sidney Lumet, Anthony Mann, Mario Monicelli, Francesco Rosi, Alberto Sordi, John Sturges, Giuseppe Tornatore, François Truffaut, Carlo Vanzina, Carlo Verdone ...
And just to remember the title of some films, here is Dances with Wolves, The Last Emperor, Tea in the Desert. But also For a Fistful of Dollars, Stardust, the Rambo trilogy, Once Upon a Time in America, Amadeus, The Name of the Rose, Little Buddha. In 2019 - almost to seal his fifty-year career - he was called by director Quentin Tarantino to collaborate in the project of the "vintage posters" created for the film Once upon a time in ... Hollywood.
In love with cinema and a little bit of Marylin Monroe too
Trusted artist and friend of great directors and actors, Renato Casaro confides to the New York Times that he was in love with cinema and a little, he remembers, also with Marylin Monroe. Today the artist has returned to live in his Treviso after a spectacular career that took him from Cinecittà to the European capitals of cinema and then to the States. His city, his region and his country have dedicated the great exhibition to him, open until May XNUMXst next year. A widespread exhibition, distributed in three different locations a Treviso.
The review documents 170 films and does so starting from the "finished product". In other words, two and four-sheet posters, intended for cinemas or for billposting. There are over a hundred pieces selected and restored for the occasion. The works in the exhibition partly belong to Casaro's personal archive but also to important public and private collections. From the almost instinctive brushstrokes of the early days to the refined airbrush maquettes that made him famous, especially in the portraits of the protagonists, between the XNUMXs and XNUMXs.
