Ivan Eyre is widely acknowledged as a Canadian artist of major accomplishment whose works possess an urgency of vision and a technical mastery rarely equalled in contemporary art. Eyre’s achievements in the figurative and landscape movements of our time have been noted in many insightful commentaries, but the relationship between his sculpture and graphic work has been less thoroughly considered.

A donation of works for the McMichael’s new Sculpture Garden provided an opportunity to examine a rarely seen body of work by this Canadian master. The McMichael bronzes constitute a summary of Eyre’s figurative preoccupations for the last four decades. These monumental works have had a long gestation. Hundreds of drawings dating from the early sixties — when the earliest expression of Eyre’s vision was first formulated — reveal the dynamic and complementary relationship between Eyre’s graphic work and sculpture, a relationship contributing significantly to our appreciation of the large bronzes.

Curated by Tom Lovatt