Sold for: $169,250

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Terrence Heath, Ivan Eyre: Personal Mythologies / Images of the Milieu, Figurative Paintings, 1957 – 1988, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1988, reproduced page 80 and listed page 127

EXHIBITED
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Ivan Eyre: Personal Mythologies / Images of the Milieu, Figurative Paintings, 1957 – 1988, traveling in 1988 - 1990 to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary; Edmonton Art Gallery; and London Regional Art Gallery

Ivan Eyre was born in Tullymet, Saskatchewan, and later moved to Winnipeg, where in 1959 he joined the University of Manitoba School of Art faculty as professor of painting and drawing. He is renowned for his diverse body of work, which includes panoramic landscapes, urban dystopias and figurative works such as this. Stills, Willows is imbued with elements of Surrealism and uses imagery that relates to men in classical Greek pottery, creating a hyper-imaginary realm. In 1971, Eyre was using the “invented” human figures from his drawing books, particularly images of bearded men, which he placed in mythological tableaus. In Stills, Willows he positioned them in a complex, layered image - in the background in a stylized landscape and in a side panel with a fractured face reminiscent of Cubism. The different sections of the work set up contradictions: the central abstracted interior with objects is contemporary, the side panel like a figure in an ancient frieze, and the background a surreal juxtaposition of landscape and stylized men. Stills, Willows is a complex and intriguing work in which Eyre’s bearded man is, as he explained, an “idea only…he 'lives' only within the realm of the painting.”

All prices are in Canadian Dollars