Ivan Kenneth Eyre was born in 1935 in Tullymet, Saskatchewan. He studied under Ernest Lindner at the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate and under Eli Bornstein at the University of Saskatchewan, graduating from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1957. He taught at the University of Manitoba from 1959 to 1993. During this time, he travelled to Europe for two years on a Canada Council Grant beginning in 1965, became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1974, and received the Queen's Silver Jubilee medal in 1977.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery held a retrospective exhibition of Eyre's work, Ivan Eyre: Exposition, in 1980 which traveled through Canada and to London and Paris, and in 1988 the Winnipeg Art Gallery mounted the exhibition Ivan Eyre: Personal Mythologies, which traveled to, and became the first exhibition at, the new National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Ivan Eyre's works are most often created from memories and ideas from within the artist's own psyche, rather than being realistic representations of his subject matter. He has painted figurative works, still lifes, personal mythologies, portraits and - the part of his oeuvre he is best known for - meticulously detailed panoramic landscapes.

In 1998 the Pavilion Museum opened in Winnipeg, with the third floor dedicated as the Ivan Eyre Gallery. Eyre donated 200 paintings, 5,000 drawings and 16 sculptures, making this gallery the largest permanent collection of his works in the world. Eyre also donated nine large-scale bronze sculptures to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 2010, now housed in their sculpture garden. Eyre has had over 65 solo and 250 group exhibitions across Canada and around the world and is represented in numerous public, private and corporate collections worldwide.