Ivan Eyre with "Lady Love" in the sculpture garden at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont. (photo courtesy Loch Gallery)
Longtime Manitoba artist Ivan Eyre, who took imagination as his guide, is dead at age 87.
Eyre created a large body of diverse work that included drawings, paintings and sculptures – everything from figurative work and portraits to landscapes and still lifes, the Winnipeg Art Gallery said Wednesday, recalling his first solo painting show there in 1964.
Eyre went on to more than 65 solo shows and 250 group exhibitions across Canada and internationally, including venues such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris and Canada House in London.
Two sculptural works by Eyre, who died on Saturday, are on permanent display outside the Winnipeg Art Gallery's entrance. He was also featured in two other shows there, Ivan Eyre: Personal Mythologies, in 1988, and the retrospective Figure Ground, in 2005.
Gallerist David Loch recalled the early days of their friendship, and his suggestion that a museum be built for Eyre's work. Within weeks, the seed had begun to take root.
"It started with him offering to gift 10 paintings to the museum," Loch said. "On the next visit, his gift had grown to 20. It increased on every visit until he eventually committed to give his entire collection to the City of Winnipeg’s Pavilion Art Gallery Museum at Assiniboine Park – 200 paintings, 5,000 drawings and 16 sculptures."
Loch, through the family's gallery in Toronto, also played a role in the establishment of the Ivan Eyre Sculpture Garden at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., which opened in 2011. Eyre contributed nine monumental bronze sculptures.
In 1988, Eyre shed light on his art practice. "Imagination is my guide," he said. "I follow it and lead it into a world largely built on my drawings. It may be in response to a real-time visual phenomenon found in my travels, or to the close-up intrigue of a busy table in the studio or kitchen. Inspiration takes an unimpeded excursion through a mix of overlapping memories and images."
Eyre was born in Tullymet, Sask., in 1935. He studied with some of the best teachers at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Manitoba and spent his adult life in Winnipeg, teaching at the University of Manitoba for more than 30 years, while maintaining a prolific studio practice.
"His works are synonymous with the Prairies," Winnipeg's Amy Karlinsky wrote in a 2003 article in Galleries West. "Particularly iconic are his paintings of the lush forested river banks of Manitoba. These views, with the landscape elements of trunk, limb, branch and leaf meticulously rendered, are often strangely ethereal. They are beautiful and full of foreboding."
Eyre was a member of the Order of Canada and the Royal Canadian Academy, and received the Queen's Gold and Silver Jubilee medals, the Order of Manitoba and an honorary Doctor of Law from the University of Manitoba. He was also the subject of several films and numerous books. His art is held in important public and private collections across Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Source: Winnipeg Art Gallery, Loch Gallery