Rita Letendre (1948-2021)

Artist

Born in 1928 to a Quebecois father and a Abenaki mother, Rita Letendre began her artistic career as a student at the École de Beaux-Arts in Montréal, she soon left to pursue abstraction with the revolutionary artist group Les Automatists.

Letendre has described her work as “force and mass in action” and said “My Painting is non-figurative, abstract, maybe it’s lyrical. All the terminology is not important. What is important is the actual painting.” Her style shifted between abstract and geometric abstraction throughout her life, with the goal to always push the limits of colour and space.

She worked in a broad range of mediums and formats over the years to capture evolving ideas and this won her the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas in 2016 in recognition of her contribution to the visual arts in Quebec. Letendre painted and created art until near her death in November of 2021.