Ivan Eyre Gallery
O(e)uvre: Commemorating Ivan Eyre
This exhibition is a celebration of the life of one of Canada’s most distinguished artists – Ivan Eyre – in the wake of his passing this past year. It presents the artist’s range of style and subject matter, framed by one of his most iconic ideologies: Art should remain subjective to the viewer to preserve its relevance and secure its longevity. The exhibition plays with the theme of “openness” by exploring how art can be a window, door, or mirror to the audience.
About Ivan Eyre
Ivan Kenneth Eyre was born in Tullymet, Saskatchewan in 1935. He studied under important artists including Ernest Lindner and Eli Bornstein, graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba in 1957, and spent the following year at the University of North Dakota. He returned to Canada to teach at the University of Manitoba until his retirement in 1993.
Throughout five decades of painting, Eyre produced figurative work, still lifes, personal mythologies, figure silhouette/landscape, family portraits and panoramic landscapes. His ability to combine these various interests into works of authority and visual appeal has made Eyre one of Canada's most respected painters.
Eyre’s landscapes often appear geographically specific, resembling locations as diverse as northern Manitoba and South America, but very few picture existing places—the majority are what he calls “invented landscapes.” While fictitious, by presenting vision itself as an always personal and creative act, Eyre’s painterly vistas bring the viewer closer to the world.
Eyre was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1974, he received the Queen's Silver Jubliee medal in 1977, and the University of Manitoba Alumni Jubilee Award in 1982.
In 1998, the Pavilion at Assiniboine Park was restored and re-opened with the entire third floor dedicated as the Ivan Eyre Gallery. Eyre donated two hundred paintings, five thousand drawings and sixteen sculptures which are shown in exhibitions in his gallery on a rotating basis. Ivan Eyre passed away in November 2022.
