Rita Letendre: 90th Birthday Celebration & Exhibition

Rita Letendre is often considered one of the most eminent living abstract artists in Canada. Now, at 90, not only is her unique and hugely influential career about to enter its seventh decade, her joy, passion and boundless energy show no signs of waning. Gallery Gevik is excited and honored to mark this historically important occasion with a special exhibition of works spanning the artist’s career and, most importantly, a birthday celebration that we look forward to sharing with all of Rita’s friends and supporters.

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. Seeking to express an innate spiritual force, 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.

Rita Letendre was born of Abenaki and Quebecois parents in Drummondville in 1928, and has lived in Toronto since late 1969. She received the Order of Canada in 2005, has completed commissions across Canada and the United States, and has been exhibited nationally and internationally. 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 and drew a new generation of admirers, eager to celebrate the passion for life evident in her brilliant paintings.