Robert Guinan, American painter, Died at 82

  Artists

Robert Guinan was born in 1934, and died on April 3, 2016.

He was a Chicago-based American painter.

He graduated from IHA in 1951, and originally worked a day job in a dental lab.

Robert at that time resided in a YMCA hotel.

During 1953, Robert Guinan enlisted in the Air Force after considering a potential Army draft during the Korean War.

The young painter served as a radio operator in North Africa and Turkey while continuing to practice drawing and painting.

Robert Guinan’s work was mostly but not entirely based on street performers, musicians, barflies, historical scenes, landscapes and building structures.

He started living and working in Chicago, in 1959, Illinois after enrolling in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He was well known in Europe 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.”

But, Lautrec was an influence on Guinan; as a young man, he saw the film “Moulin Rouge” and felt like Toulouse-Lautrec, the 19th-century French painter known for his portraits of night life in Paris.

Robert Guinan ublic 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.

Robert Guinan passed away at 82 yrs old.