Rita Letendre: From the Archives

Rita Letendre is considered one of the most eminent living abstract artists in Canada and Gallery Gevik is pleased to present a special exhibition of never-before-seen early works from the artist’s formative period. More importantly, we’ll also be celebrating Rita’s birthday and look forward to sharing this special occasion with all of her friends and supporters.

Rita Letendre was born of Abenaki and Quebecois parents in Drummondville in 1928, and has lived in Toronto since late 1969. Letendre began painting professionally in the 1950s, alongside Quebec’s Les Automatistes but broke away from their artistic approach when she began to challenge the ideas of the Automatiste movement. Letendre rigorously experimented with space, movement, and tension working with oils, pastels, acrylics, palette knife, and eventually the airbrush, which she began using in 1971. Her intense and vibrant colour field paintings are composed of densely applied gestural strokes, evoking raw states of emotion and restlessness, which became a trademark throughout her career. She is an Officer of l’Ordre National du Quebec (2002), an Officer of the Order of Canada (2005), a Recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012), a Member of the Order of Ontario (2016), and was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2010). In 2017, Rita Letendre: Fire & Light, the first major museum retrospective of Letendre‘s work to originate outside Quebec, opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

We are especially proud to announce that Rita Letendre is the Eiteljorg Museum’s Invited Artist and Fellowship Award Winner for 2019 and twelve of her paintings will be celebrated in a new exhibition and symposium, Blurring the Line at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana from November 16, 2019 – February 2, 2020. The museum aims to steward one of the most important collections of contemporary Native art in the world and to showcase fascinating, important works of Indigenous artists: https://contemporaryartfellowship.eiteljorg.org/