In his career retrospective in 2000 at the Chicago Cultural Center, Dr. Paul Jaskot wrote that "his art investigates the changing political and social geographies of [the modern] city.

He started his professional career in Los Angeles at the Paul Plummer Gallery and was later represented by Monique Knowlton in New York City.

John Russell of the New York Times wrote of his work that "You will have an approximate idea of the teeming and endlessly pugnacious human scene that Robert Donley sets before us...

[7] In 1955, Donley enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where he studied under Boris Margo, Edgard Pillet, and Thomas Kapsalis.

Paul Klein of the Huffington Post wrote that these works show a "fascinating look not only at the differences that exist between L.A. and Chicago, but also the effect of place on one artist.

[16] Joshua Kind described these works as such: "Donley's landscapes-of-the-mind organize earth, sea, and sky into foreground, middleground, and background according to the conventions of overlap.

But Donley's concern is surface, not space... Each of these fascinating individual events contributes to the overall structure and texture of his field and each is painted in wonderfully controlled finger gestures of multiple-color loaded brush strokes.

"[17]In 1980, he opened his first one-person show in New York at the Monique Knowlton Gallery, exhibiting a collection of paintings depicting his interpretation of World War II.

Like Hieronymus Bosch, to whom he's been compared, or fellow Chicagoan Roger Brown, who also stages miniaturized dramas, Donley makes us voyeurs.

"[1] In a later show in New York, Guy Trebay said of his paintings that "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.

"[18] In a review of this show in ArtForum magazine, Ronny Cohen wrote that "From a distance, the paintings bold rhythms of color and line contrast demonstrating the beauty of war concept glorified by the Futurists.

[20] New York was an important subject matter as well; Donley filled large canvases with the architecture of that city and portraits of New Yorkers: the street vendors, policemen, tourists, the Mets and the Yankees.

As James Yood wrote in Artforum, "Donley has chosen a grand, challenging, and unwieldy theme for his work... no less than the life of the modern city, as manifested in its buildings and in its residents.

At the same time he was marching, two of his two anti-war paintings, LBJ and Tank Attack were being displayed at the Armory on South Wabash Avenue.

[28] A year later, his work was shown in Artists Call Against Intervention in Central America at Frumkin Struve Gallery in Chicago.