Select Reviews

 

The new show at Corbet vs. Dempsey of Robert Donley . . . [is] a fascinating look not only at the differences that exist between L.A. and Chicago, but also the effect of place on one artist.
Paul Klein, Huffington Post

Standing before a Robert Donley painting, with its tiny buildings and swarms of diminutive people, one feels like Gulliver among the Lilliputians  . . . From the first moment, the viewer is captivated.
Michele Vishny, Art Magazine

The skies are full of planes, the grounds are overpopulated with myriad tiny trees, people, monuments, and buildings.  You'll barely recognize New York, Washington, Paris, and Moscow mapped out amidst all the horror of vacui--but that's exactly the charm of these primitivistic patterned paintings.
Guy Trebay, Village Voice

Imagine the Bayeux Tapestry seen through the wrong end of a telescope, and you will have an approximate idea of the teeming and endlessly pugnacious  human scene that Robert Donley sets before us  . . . It has the fascination of perpetual motion.
John Russell, New York Times

Once you're nose-deep in his [Donley's] world at war, it's hard not to be taken captive. Like Hieronymus Bosch, to whom he's been compared, or fellow Chicagoan Roger Brown, who also stages miniaturized dramas, Donley makes us voyeurs. 
Judith Wilson, Village Voice

From a distant view, the paintings' bold rhythms of color and line contrast, demonstrating the beauty of war concept glorified by the Futurists. Close-up, the paintings look like many of the war games we played as children with toy armies . . . Donley succeeds at making us play along in his war games and at elicting our active responses.
Ronny H. Cohen, ArtForum

The human factor [in Donley's paintings] achieves the same high density as the buildings in a kind of parallel narrative . . . The paintings pulse with vitality in their faux naif style.
Alan Artner, Chicago Tribune

If ever there was a genius of overkill, it is Donley.
Harold Haydon, Chicago Sun Times

Donley is an accomplished Linnaean who names the important things that can never be fully described; his irreducible city brings together place and people in a state of perpetual inventory.
James Yood, Chicago Tribune

Donley's work is aptly described as "cram-packed figurative painting of a joyous fantasy world" in which tiny figures act out the human drama.
Harold Haydon, Chicago Sun Times

In addition to the numerous one-man and group exhibitions of Donley's work held throughout the United States for over two decades, the many prizes he has been awarded attest to his esteemed rank in the arts.
Michele Vishny, Art Magazine