Robert Guinan (March 14, 1934 – April 3, 2016) was an American painter based in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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The subject matter of his work includes but has not been limited to street performers, musicians, barflies, historical scenes, landscapes and building structures. Lauded in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
but widely unknown in his native Chicago, Guinan's work reflects a documentary quality that has been compared to "that of the Parisian demi-mondes as chronicled and interpreted by
Toulouse-Lautrec
Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the la ...
."
Collections
Public collections include
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon; Musée de Grenoble; Musée du dessin et de l’estampe originale, Gravelines; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna, Collection Berardo, Sintra, Portugal.
Exhibitions
Guinan's work has been featured in exhibitions as follows:
Group Exhibitions
Films
Robert Guinan's life and work has been the subject of two films, including the 1995 documentary ''Division Street U.S.A.: Following Robert Guinan'' (Frédéric Compain, 52 min, Coproduction Dune, Leapfrog Production, Arte - G.E.I.E.) and the 2006 documentary ''Robert Guinan, un peintre en marge du rêve américain'' (Albert Loeb and Nicole Sérès, 48 min, Les Films Lazare)
Life and career
Guinan was born in 1934 in
Watertown, New York
Watertown is a city in, and the county seat of, Jefferson County, New York, United States. It is approximately south of the Thousand Islands, along the Black River about east of where it flows into Lake Ontario. The city is bordered by the ...
. Boyhood fascination with the work of magazine illustrator Herbert Morton Stoops led to an interest in drawing and painting. Because formal art instruction was not offered at
Immaculate Heart Academy
Immaculate Heart Academy (IHA) is an all-girls college preparatory private Roman Catholic high school located in Washington Township, in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States.
The school colors are blue and white, and the school's athletes ...
(IHA), Guinan's mother Dorothy arranged night classes for her son with Mary Morley, an art teacher at Watertown High School.
Guinan's first exhibition occurred when he was just 15 at the Watertown library. A critic in the
Watertown Daily Times
The ''Watertown Daily Times'' is a newspaper published six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday, in Watertown, New York. It provides coverage of Jefferson County, Lewis County, St. Lawrence County and Oswego County. It was founded in 1861 and ...
called the show "a most creditable exhibit for an artist of his age and training". It led to annual exhibits of his works through his high school years. Times writer David F. Lane wrote in 1950 that his paintings were "of such character in composition, coloration and brush technique as to definitely forecast a promising future for him in the field of art." He praised the 16-year-old artist's "rare genius for capturing action in tense moments, and in rendering facial expressions which accurately represent the mood and thought of the character."
Guinan graduated from IHA in 1951. Living in a YMCA hotel, his first job was as an assistant in a dental lab, constructing false teeth. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1953, after considering a potential Army draft during the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
. He served as a radio operator in
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...
and
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
while continuing to practice drawing and painting. Emulating the
post-impressionists
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction aga ...
who were his heroes, he took an interest in the peasant life and brothels he encountered in
Ankara
Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...
, embarking upon a life's work of portraying the disenfranchised in his paintings and drawings. It was also during his time in the Air Force that Guinan developed an interest in African-American Blues and Jazz.
In 1959, Guinan moved to Chicago, Illinois, enrolling in the
School of the Art Institute. He was immediately enthralled by the nightclub culture of the city, discovering that many of the Black recording artists he loved were living and performing in local nightclubs such as the King's Palace and the Queen's Paradise. He also discovered
Maxwell Street
Maxwell Street is an east-west street in Chicago, Illinois that intersects with Halsted Street just south of Roosevelt Road. It runs at 1330 South in the numbering system running from 500 West to 1126 West.Hayner, Don and Tom McNamee (1988). '' ...
, an open-air market which had been a Chicago tradition since the beginning of the century; once dominated by Jewish merchants, it was now popular with African American peddlers and Blues musicians.
In 1972, Robert Guinan was introduced to Parisian art dealer Albert Loeb. Beginning in 1973, Guinan worked regularly with the Albert Loeb Gallery.
As of 2010 he is represented locally in Chicago.
Guinan died in
Evanston in 2016. One son, Paul, is a
comic-book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are oft ...
artist and creator of the fictional character
Boilerplate. Another son,
Sean Guinan (b. 1970), is a film maker and musician known for prize-winning films including "Teplitz; the Tyranny of Paradox" and "
Flipping the Whale", and his cabaret-style band, Candy Town.
References
External links
Robert Guinan, on son Paul Guinan's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guinan, Robert
1934 births
2016 deaths
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
21st-century American male artists
Painters from Chicago
People from Watertown, New York
Deaths from lymphoma in the United States
20th-century American male artists