The Salce Collection is the first state museum in Italy dedicated to advertising and the second largest in the world for advertising posters, after the Musée de la Publicité in Paris. It boasts over 50,000 pieces, dating from 1895 to the present, collected by Treviso-born Ferdinando Salce, as well as other recent bequests.

In 2025, the Salce Collection National Museum dedicated a gallery to Renato Casaro in the San Gaetano complex, one of its two locations along with the former Church of Santa Margherita (both in the center of Treviso, just minutes from each other). The extraordinary artist worked for over 70 years as a film poster illustrator, collaborating with the greatest directors in cinema, from Jean-Jeacques Annaud to Ingmar Bergman, from Bernardo Bertolucci to Luc Besson, from Francis Ford Coppola to Sidney Lumet, from Sergio Leone to Giuseppe Tornatore.

Film is my hobby. My hobby is my profession. My profession is my life. And my life is a film in Technicolor and Cinemascope.

(Renato Casaro)

His work began in the postwar period, when major studios began producing films for the big screen, exporting the “American Dream” worldwide. This style relied entirely on manual techniques, such as pencil and tempera, until the advent of computer graphics.

And, as the Italian school of film posters is the most famous in the world, Treviso-born Renato Casaro is considered by leading directors, from Sergio Leone to Giuseppe Tornatore, and more recently by Quentin Tarantino who chose him for his latest film, its spearhead.

Casaro, a masterful creative genius, is among the artists who most innovated this art form. Aided by his talent for drawing, he began creating “silhouettes” for film promotion in Treviso’s cinemas. Immediately acclaimed, he left for Rome in 1954, at just 19 years old, where he worked for the renowned Augusto Favalli until 1957, when he opened his own studio, launching a dazzling career.

A career that has never stopped: in fact, he designed some of the posters that changed the history of cinema, such as the one for Nikita, whose composition – the bloodstain in the foreground with the elegant silhouette of the spy from behind on a different parallel plane – is considered by many critics to be one of the most significant of the modern era, but also Once Upon a Time in America, The Sheltering Sky, The Last Emperor, Dances with Wolves, Rambo, Never Say Never Again, and many others.

Renato Casaro is one of the artists who, in recent years, has contributed most to the global success of Italian art. While cinema never ceases to make us dream, his works are capable of inspiring endless emotions.
Enjoy your visit!

Ph. Renato Casaro by Giovanni Vecchiato

The Secret

There are so many anecdotes from Renato Casaro’s life that could be told. From the legendary poster for They Call Me Trinity…, which the director even drew inspiration from, turning it into a scene in the film, to when Clint Eastwood unexpectedly enters the artist’s Rome studio to ask him to buy one of the posters featuring him.

Useful Info

Museo Nazionale Collezione Salce
Via Carlo Alberto 31
31100 Treviso
Santa Margherita +39 0422 423386
San Gaetano +39 0422 591936

Admission: €10 for two locations, €6 for one location
Open Fri – Sun 10am – 6pm