Rita Letendre, LL. D. (November 1, 1928 – November 20, 2021) was a Canadian painter,

muralist A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanish ...

, and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...

associated with

Les Automatistes Les Automatistes were a group of Québécois artistic dissidents from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The movement was founded in the early 1940s by painter Paul-Émile Borduas. Les Automatistes were so called because they were influenced by Surrea ...

and the Plasticiens. She was an Officer of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the ...

and a recipient of the

Governor General's Award The Governor General's Awards are a collection of annual awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, recognizing distinction in numerous academic, artistic, and social fields. The first award was conceived and inaugurated in 1937 by the ...

Early life

Letendre was born the eldest of seven children to Anne-Marie Ledoux and Héliodore Letendre in

Drummondville Drummondville is a city in the Centre-du-Québec region of Quebec, located east of Montreal on the Saint-François River. The population as of the Canada 2021 Census was 79,258. The mayor of Drummondville is Stéphanie Lacoste. Drummondville is ...

, Quebec. She was of

Abenaki The Abenaki (Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was predom ...

and Québécois descent. At age 19, while working at a restaurant in mid-town

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, a patron saw sketches she was working on when business became quiet and was struck by her talent. Practically insisting that she enroll in the

École des beaux-arts de Montréal École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région ...

(of which Letendre had never heard), he picked her up at home, took her to the school and stood at the bottom of the steps ensuring she entered, then continued to stand there long enough for her to be asked if she was enrolling – the answer was "Yes". After several questionnaires and a practical exam, she was accepted. It was there that she met friends Gilles Groulx and Ulysse Comtois, who was to be her partner for over 15 years. There she worked in an academic atmosphere for a year and a half. In 1950, she went to view an art show "L’Exposition des Rebelles" (despite being largely condemned by her professors) and befriended the show organizer

Jean-Paul Mousseau Jean-Paul Mousseau (January 1, 1927 – February 7, 1991) was a Quebec artist. He was a student of Paul-Émile Borduas, a member of the Automatist group and a founding member of the Association of Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal. Career Jea ...

– this was her introduction to the circle of

Paul-Émile Borduas Paul-Émile Borduas (November 1, 1905 – February 22, 1960) was a Québecois artist known for his abstract paintings. He was the leader of the avant-garde Automatiste movement and the chief author of the Refus Global manifesto of 1948. Bord ...

and

. Soon thereafter, she left the École des beaux-arts de Montréal.

The Automatistes

(the main force behind the manifesto

Refus Global Le Refus global ( en, Total Refusal, link=yes) was an anti-establishment and anti-religious manifesto released on August 9, 1948, in Montreal by a group of sixteen young Québécois artists and intellectuals that included Paul-Émile Borduas, Jea ...

) was probably the greatest influence to Letendre’s life as a painter – he believed self-knowledge was the key to producing highly personal work. When she was mocked for painting figurative images, Borduas would defend her, insisting figurative painting or non-figurative painting was still painting. By 1951, Letendre had abandoned figuration and become an abstract painter. She began showing with the Automatistes in store windows and on fences in St-Louis Square in Montreal.

The Plasticiens

Her first official group show was in 1955 at the Henri Tranquille bookstore in Montreal, alongside other first and second generation Automatistes. Eventually her work was noticed, most notably by artist/art critic Rodolphe de Repentigny (the major force behind the Plasticiens, who espoused the philosophies of

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...

and the virtues of geometric form in art). Impressed by the structure and form in the works of the Plasticiens, Letendre began changing her style to a more geometric one, employing more structured colour fields, zones of energy, thus temporarily abandoning the purely instinctual approach of automatism. She showed at Espace 55 with the Plasticiens – the exhibition was shown in Quebec, Montréal,

Rimouski Rimouski ( ) is a city in Quebec, Canada. Rimouski is located in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, at the mouth of the Rimouski River. It has a population of 48,935 (as of 2021). Rimouski is the site of Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), the C ...

and Toronto – the same year as she had her first solo show at L’Echourie in Montreal.

Zen and Abstract Expressionism

In the late 1950s, having internalized the ideas of the Plasticiens, she abandoned the confines of geometric works and began studying the ideas of

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

and

Confucius Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. C ...

; these ideas began to translate into her paintings characterized by lines and strokes in black and white. She was also struck by the work of the

Abstract Expressionists Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

in New York and in particular, impressed by the work of

Franz Kline Franz Kline (May 23, 1910 – May 13, 1962) was an American painter. He is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Kline, along with other action painters like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mothe ...

. Many of these elements and themes would be revisited in the works that soon followed, increasing in gestural quality and characterized with heavy

impasto ''Impasto'' is a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface thickly, usually thick enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas. When dry, impasto provide ...

with a

palette knife A palette knife is a blunt tool used for mixing or applying paint, with a flexible steel blade. It is primarily used for applying paint to the canvas, mixing paint colors, adding texture to the painted surface, paste, etc., or for marbling, decora ...

spatula A spatula is a broad, flat, flexible blade used to mix, spread and lift material including foods, drugs, plaster and paints. In medical applications, "spatula" may also be used synonymously with tongue depressor. The word ''spatula'' derives f ...

. Her production began to increase and Letendre began to come into her own, winning first prize in the Concours de la Jeune Peinture in 1959 and the Prix Rodolphe-de-Repentigny in 1960. This prize (worth $300) and the additional sales that followed enabled Letendre to quit her job and paint full-time – it also allowed her to buy more paint and canvas. Armed with better paint, more colors and more material, she began painting larger works in explosions of violent color and won second prize in the painting category in the Concours artistiques du Québec in 1961. Her compositions were intensely personal, more carefully planned; she began anchoring masses with carefully visualized gestures which would often take hours to visualize and execute. Having secured a

Canada Council The Canada Council for the Arts (french: Conseil des arts du Canada), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It acts as the federal government's principal i ...

grant in 1962, she travelled with Ulysse Comtois throughout Europe for the next year and a half. This was a productive period and she sent large groups of works home; the beginnings of her hard edge style also began, where more well defined masses or wedges would evoke vibration, movement and collisions. In Italy she showed at

Spoleto Spoleto (, also , , ; la, Spoletum) is an ancient city in the Italian province of Perugia in east-central Umbria on a foothill of the Apennines. It is S. of Trevi, N. of Terni, SE of Perugia; SE of Florence; and N of Rome. History Spolet ...

, won a gold medal at Piccola Europa in Sassaferator, and met Russian-born sculptor

Kosso Eloul Kosso Eloul born in Russia, 1920–1995, was an Israeli sculptor. His work displays a combination between the influence of " Canaanite" art and the abstractionism of the Ofakim Hadashim movement. He won the Dizengoff Prize for Sculpture in 1951. ...

. On Eloul’s invitation to work in one of his studios, she travelled with Ulysse Comtois to paint in

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

Hard Edge

In the middle and late 1960s, she simplified her work and focused on hard-edge geometric shapes and movement, developing what became known as her flèches (arrows) so that diagonal lines activated the surface of her works. Her personal life changed too. She travelled to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

for three months and ended her relationship with Ulysse Comtois; by the end of the year she was in a new relationship with

. When he took a teaching position at California State College at Long Beach in March 1964, Letendre went with him. In California, two key opportunities availed her. The first was a commission to paint ''Sunforce'' a large mural executed on a campus building. ''Sunforce'' represents a critical turning point in her technique. In the context of California with its

Light and Space Light and Space denotes a loosely affiliated art movement related to op art, minimalism and geometric abstraction originating in Southern California in the 1960s and influenced by John McLaughlin (artist), John McLaughlin. It is characterized by ...

Group, her impasto work may have seemed to make little sense. Also, due to the massive scale of the mural, her current impasto technique was impractical and she was forced to adapt to the flat plane of the mural surface. In ''Sunforce'', the image suggests a large mass that drops, and continues to drop as though it would continue through the bottom and off the painting. The second, was the opportunity to learn

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed techniq ...

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

and eventually

silk screen Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open me ...

, a technique conducive to

hard-edge Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and C ...

shapes. The couple left

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

in 1969, alternating their time between New York and

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

(which would continue until 1975) when Toronto became her centre, the demand for her work increased. In New York, galleries were purchasing entire series’ of 100 prints outright. One day in 1971 someone suggested she might obtain a better effect on her long lines/rays if she used an

airbrush An airbrush is a small, air-operated tool that atomizes and sprays various media, most often paint but also ink and dye, and foundation. Spray painting developed from the airbrush and is considered to employ a type of airbrush. History U ...

; hesitant at first, she began using it more, then eventually used it all of the time. She found that airbrush brought her something new, something that neither oil, nor acrylic, nor the millions of lines she had made in the 1970s had succeeded in bringing her. The popularity of her work continued with many public and private commissions for large scale works and

murals A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanish ...

including one covering the top six stories of the Neill-Wycik college residence at

Ryerson University Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU or Toronto Met) is a public university, public research university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District, Toronto, Garden District, although i ...

in Toronto, the first of its kind in Canada. She was also commissioned to design a huge coloured

skylight A skylight (sometimes called a rooflight) is a light-permitting structure or window, usually made of transparent or translucent glass, that forms all or part of the roof space of a building for daylighting and ventilation purposes. History Open ...

for the ceiling of

Glencairn (TTC) Glencairn is a subway station on Line 1 Yonge–University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the median of William R. Allen Road at Glencairn Avenue. Wi-Fi service is available at this station. The station is in the Glen Park neigh ...

subway station in Toronto entitled ''Joy''; it was eventually removed at Letendre’s request because the panels had faded after being exposed to many years of sunlight. However, "Joy" was reengineered and reinstalled in Glencarin Station in 2014 and cast a warm, orange glow over commuters to this day In the early 1970s, she began to soften some of the edges in her works, a trend that would continue the next few years; this resulted in a myriad of horizontal landscape compositions often containing a few or even only one thin hard edge line.

Pastel

She began experimenting with

pastels A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square a pebble or a pan of color; though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those use ...

in 1980 and produced a series in 1982 inspired by the nearby

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

landscape while staying with her husband in

Beverly Hills Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Bev ...

as he recovered from heart surgery. Pastels and the techniques she developed with them afforded her an opportunity to create a soft edge effect in

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

like compositions using a completely different medium.

Reversion to oil and current work

By 1995, she worked in heavier oils again, abandoning the airbrush completely, and controlled her gestural compositions with brush, palette knife and her hands. Her husband,

, died later that year, and she took a long break from painting. In the summer of 1997 she returned to painting and continued to show and develop her style. After having sold her house in Toronto, she moved back to Montreal in 2004. She went on to be awarded the

in 2005, an honorary Ph.D. from the

University of Montreal A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

and the Governor General’s Award in 2010 and the

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (french: Médaille du jubilé de diamant de la reine Elizabeth II) or The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal was a commemorative medal created in 2012 to mark the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's ...

in 2012. At 87, Letendre has continued to produce and show works created as recently as 2014. In 2017 her work was included in the exhibition, ''The Ornament of a House: Fifty Years of Collecting'' at the Burnaby Art Gallery Her work also appeared in the first major museum retrospective of Letendre's work to originate outside Quebec held at the

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Beve ...

in 2017, ''Rita Letendre: Fire & Light'', which was said to be long overdue. It was co-curated by Wanda Nanibush and

Georgiana Uhlyarik Georgiana Uhlyarik-Nicolae, also known as Georgiana Uhlyarik (born 1972) is a Romanian-born Canadian art curator, art historian, and teacher. She is currently the Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). She ...

Awards

*1959 – Premier Prix, Concours de la Jeune Peinture *1960 - Prix Rodolphe-de-Repentigny *1961 - Prix de la Peinture, Province du Québec *1962 - Canada Council Travel Grant (Europe) *1962 - Gold Medal, Piccola Europa Exhibition, Sassoferrato, Italy *1967 - Bourse de Recherche, Gouvernement du Québec *1970 - Ile Festival International de Peinture, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France (Prix National) *1975 - Canada Council Senior Arts Grant *2002 - Officer of l'Ordre National du Québec *2005 - Officer of the Order of Canada *2010 - Creation of prix hommage Rita-Letendre de la ville de Drummondville *2010 -

Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts The Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts are annual awards for achievements in visual and media arts in Canada. Up to eight awards are presented annually with the prize amount is $25,000 Created in 2000 by then Governor General Adrie ...

*2010 – Honoris Causa Ph D – University of Montreal *2012 – Recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal *2016 – Member of the Order of Ontario

Solo shows

Letendre has had many solo shows, both nationally and internationally. Among them, some of the most important were the following: *1974 ''Rita Letendre'' : Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, California *1989 ''Rita Letendre : the Montréal years, 1953-1963 = les années montréalaises, 1953-1963'', Concordia Art Gallery, Montreal *2001 ''Rita Letendre : Les Elements - The Elements'', Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal *2003 ''Rita Letendre : aux couleurs du jour'',

Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec ( en, National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec), abbreviated as MNBAQ, is an art museum in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The museum is situated in Battlefield Park and is a complex consisting of four bui ...

*2005 ''Rita Letendre: Beginnings in Abstraction'',

Robert McLaughlin Gallery The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a public art gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest public art gallery in the Regional Municipality of Durham, of which Oshawa is a part. The gallery houses a significant collection of Canadian conte ...

, Oshawa, Ontario *2013 ''Rita Letendre'', Gallery Gevik, Toronto *2017 ''Rita Letendre: Fire & Light'',

, Toronto *2021 ''Rita Letendre: Lines of Strength'', Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup *2022 ''Rita Letendre: Eternal Space'', Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in California State University Long Beach in conjunction with the completion of restoration on Letendre's 1965 mural ''Sunforce''. Among her other solo shows were: *1955 Galerie L'Echourie, Montreal *1956 Galerie L'Actuelle, Montreal *1959 Galerie Denyse Delrue, Montreal (also 1961) *1961 Museé des Beaux-Arts, Montreal *1961 Here and Now Gallery, Toronto and when

Dorothy Cameron Dorothy Cameron Bloore (1924–2000) was a Canadian art dealer, and installation artist in Toronto, Ontario. Her works can be found in the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Biography Dorothy Cameron initially ...

changed the name to Dorothy Cameron Gallery, Letendre had shows there (1962, 1963) *1969 Gordon Gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel *1972 The Arwin Gallery, Detroit *1972 Museé d'Art Contemporain, Montreal *1980 Centre Culturel de Drummondville (also 1998) *2001 Centre d'exposition de Baie-Saint-Paul *2003 Musée du Québec (also 2004) *2004 Winnipeg Art Gallery

Major collections

Letendre's work is in many public collections in Canada such as the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

, Ottawa; the

, Toronto; the

, Oshawa, Ontario; the City of Burnaby Permanent Art Collection; and many museums in the United States.

Record Sale Prices

Rita Letendre’s large oil ''Reflet d’Eden'' (1961), hammered down at C$375,000 ($296,000) at the Heffel Auction, June 1st 2022. With fees the price came to C$451,250 ($356,000), a record for the late artist and some four times its low estimate.

Personal life

In her early life, Letendre's father worked as a mechanic and obtained trucking contracts when possible, but life for her family was difficult and they lived in poverty. Following a serious injury to one of her fingers in 1931, Letendre was sent to live with Marianna Ledoux, her maternal grandmother, in Saint-Francois-du-Lac. There, she thrived in a more relaxed atmosphere where she could play, read, pick flowers, take boat rides and more importantly, escape her turbulent home life. The planned visit was to last for a year but continued until she was old enough to attend school. At school, Rita was fascinated, this being her first opportunity to be stimulated intellectually. In 1935, the family moved to Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham, near

, where integration to the community was difficult – here, she and her siblings (being of

heritage on their father’s side) experienced the prejudices experienced by many First Nations children that were incessant and often violent. Although she learned to defend herself well, she ultimately preferred solitude. To escape the hate that surrounded her, she created her own happier worlds, drawn in her schoolbooks. In 1941, the family moved back to Drummondville where she enrolled in her first year of high school but before she could return for a second year, the family moved to downtown Montreal and Letendre had to stay home to take care of her five younger siblings while both of her parents took jobs for the war effort. This period of her life was a blessing in disguise; she continued drawing in the evenings, she was able to devour books as fast as she could get her hands on them, she discovered Opera on the radio which became a lifelong love, and she discovered famous master works of art in books at the library which she had heard about on the radio. By 1946 she was desperate to escape her family duties; first taking a factory job, then working as a restaurant cashier, she left home to live with her boyfriend with whom she had a son, Jacques. It did not last and Rita separated from Jacques' father — Jacques was eventually raised by his maternal grandmother.

Wanda Nanibush Wanda Nanibush (born 1976) is an Anishinaabe curator, artist and educator based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the author of the 2017 book ''Violence No More: The Rise of Indigenous Wome ...

writes of Letendre who said that she had "an overwhelming rage that nothing could hold back" that inspired her with the desire to be a great painter - that Letendre's rage could have been inspired by the discrimination she experienced for being Abenaki and for being a woman in the "ridiculous world". Nanibush believes Letendre's rage inspired her painting. Fire became her trademark, writes Nanibush. On November 20, 2021, Rita Letendre died of

blood cancer Tumors of the hematopoietic and lymphoid tissues (American English) or tumours of the haematopoietic and lymphoid tissues (British English) are tumors that affect the blood, bone marrow, lymph, and lymphatic system. Because these tissues are all ...