A Very Rare Early Work from prominent Canadian Artist Ivan Eyre

Ivan Eyre (1935-2022) 
“Woman in Red & Blue” 1957
Oil on Canvas 

This 1957 Canvas was gifted to the couple Eyre was living with in Winnipeg in 1956 & 1957. Very few works from Eyres early career have survived from this period. It is widely known Eyre destroyed the majority of his early work so this painting is one of the only times a painting of this era has been offered to the public. 

Eyre graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1957 (the same year this painting was created), and is only 2 years before he became a professor of fine arts at U of M in 1959. This painting was likely a thank you gift to the couple he lived with during his school years. 

Eyre moved to the United States in the later half of 1957 so this also helps us date this to the first 6 months of 1957. There are a couple other paintings in the permanent Ivan Eyre Gallery at the Assiniboine Park Conservatory in Winnipeg also from 1957. Those two look a little different than this one so we think those might be from later 1957 when Ivan’s style became changing.


Biography: 
Ivan Eyre was born in 1935 in the small farming community of Tullynet in Saskatchewan. His Father was a rural school teacher. Ivan drew and painted from a very young age and was encouraged by his family.

After studying at the Saskatchewan Art Center, Saskatchewan Technical Collegiate and the University of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and North Dakota, Eyre graduated in 1957, and in 1959 was hired to teach drawing by the University of Manitoba, School of Fine Art. Eyre eventually became a full time professor at the U of M School of Art and taught painting and drawing until his retirement in 1993.

A self styled radical who has created a unique world using landscape interiors and the human figure, Eye’s reputation as a non conformist was long established. Called an expressionist, a surrealist and a magical realist and even a super realist, he always saw himself as a self styled radical.

As a young artist Eyre eschewed the mainstream, at the time the colourful drips and smears of abstract expression. Building solidly detailed, finely tuned, beautifully crafted surreal pictures of men contrasted against the land they came from. He also painted interior scenes and crafted small, but powerful sculptures of people. His self portraits were remarkable and were described as shockingly honest searches for his own character.

Eyre’s work appears in the collections of 91 national and international corporations, hundreds of private collectors in Canada, the US and Europe, 35 public institutions including the National Gallery of Canada.

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