His work...comprises an astonishing collective portrait of the city.
-Alex Kotlowitz Never a City So Real, 2004
MELROSE STREET AT NIGHT 1975 57.5" X " X 42"
ALONG THE NORTH BRANCH CANAL
1979 56" X 48"
ON MAXWELL STREET 1971
2004 40" X 44"
MAXWELL STREET DYING
1972 73" X 91"
ELEVATED TRACKS ACROSS LINCOLN AVENUE 1979 74" X " X 44"
“As the city that Guinan took for his subject matter--the gritty underworlds; the forgotten, neglected, invisible, and despised; the neighborhood architecture and cityscape that made Chicago what it once was as a major and original American city--is destroyed, ‘gentrified,’ replaced, and erased, Guinan’s work forms a documentary history and portrait no less stirring than that of the Parisian demi-mondes as chronicled and interpreted by Toulouse-Lautrec.”
Andrew Patner - Robert Guinan: Beyond Biography, Beyond "Story"