Works by Rita Letendre

Rita Letendre

Carnaval

Oil on wood
1957
38 x 45,5 cm (15 x 18 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Paix

Oil on canvas
1962
46 x 51 cm (18 x 20 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Mistral

Oil on canvas
1960
61 x 66 cm (24 x 26 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (Californie noir/blanc)

Acrylic on canvas
1966
61 x 76 cm (24 x 30 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Meeting in Space

Acrylic on canvas
1968
152,5 x 106,5 cm (60 x 42 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Soren

Acrylic on canvas
1972
122 x 178 cm (48 x 70 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Sans titre

Acrylic on canvas
N.d.
152,5 x 180,25 cm (60 x 71 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (RLM-009)

Acrylic on panel
N.d.
43 x 71 cm (17 x 28 po)

● not available

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (RLM-003) — maquette pour Sunrise

Acrylic on panel
Vers 1971
35,5 x 35,5 cm (14 x 14 po)
$ 7500.00 CAD framed

Rita Letendre

Sina

Acrylic on canvas
1972
50 x 152 cm (20 x 60 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

The North

Acrylic on canvas
1990
91,5 x 274,3 cm (36 x 108 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Petite fleur qui perce les ténèbres

Oil on canvas
1999
122 x 137 cm (48 x 54 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Fire storms in my mind

Oil on canvas
2000
152,5 x 228,5 cm (60 x 90 po)

● not available

Rita Letendre

Victoire dans la nuit

Oil on canvas
2000
203 x 152,5 cm (80 x 60 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

A Summer Day at the Sea

Oil on canvas
2011
140,5 x 165 cm (55,5 x 65 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Star Song

Oil on canvas
2004
162,5 x 228,6 cm (64x 90 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Was it or Will it Be

Oil on canvas
1988
61 x 76,2 cm (24 x 30 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Lumière, lumière

Oil on canvas
2002
101,6 x 121,9 cm (40 x 48 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Trajectoire de lumière

Oil on canvas
2010
50,8 x 40,6 cm (20 x 16 po)
$ 7500.00 CAD not framed

Rita Letendre

Sous le signe de l'amour vert

Etching on paper
1982
57 x 75,5 cm (22,5 x 30 po)
$ 4500.00 CAD framed

Rita Letendre

Oran

Silkscreen on paper
1978
101,5 x 75,5 cm (40 x 28 po)

● not available

Rita Letendre

Mistificat

Silkscreen on paper
1977
71 x 101,6 cm (28 x 40 po)
$ 3400.00 CAD framed

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (14/25)

Oil on paper
2001
18 x 26 cm (7 x 10,25 po)
$ 3700.00 CAD framed

Rita Letendre

RL02-01 "Untitled"

Oil on cardboard
2002
27,5 x 35,5 cm (11 x 14 po)
$ 3350.00 CAD framed

Rita Letendre

Sans titre

Oil on cardboard
2013
26 x 36 cm (10 x 14 po)
$ 3350.00 CAD framed

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (FH-31P)

Casein on paper
1963
45,5 x 60,5 cm (18 x 24 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (2)

Ink on paper
1964
17,5 x 25 cm (7 x 10 po)
$ 3400.00 CAD not framed

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (RL62-36)

Ink on paper
1962
16 x 22 cm (6,25 x 8,75 po)
$ 3200.00 CAD framed

Rita Letendre

Choc

Casein on paper
1963
45,75 x 61 cm (18 x 24 po)
Price available on request

Rita Letendre

Sans titre (RL62-15)

Ink on paper
1962
24 x 32 cm (9,5 x 12,5 po)
$ 4400.00 CAD framed

About the artist

Rita Letendre

Rita Letendre

Rita Letendre was born in Drummondville, Québec in 1928 to a Québécois father and Abenaki mother. Her work evolved along with her studies in art and association with various artistic movements, including that of Paul-Émile Borduas’ automatistes. Her many exhibitions in Canada and abroad—she spent time in France, Italy, Israel and the United States before finally settling in Toronto in 1970—have made her a key artist of the country’s postwar period. She is the recipient of a 2010 Governor General’s Award, the highest honour granted to Canadian visual artists.

In 1954, her work was included in the major automatiste exhibition La matière chante, where it attracted the attention of the critic Rodolphe de Repentigny. Her first solo show took place at the Montreal gallery L’Échourie in 1955; later, in 1961, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presented a selection of her large-sized works. Since then, numerous solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Vancouver and Edmonton, as well as in Israel, the United States (New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Detroit and Chicago), France, Italy, and other countries.

Her artistic career has been characterized by a consistency of approach that has taken her from the structured, gestural abstraction of the 1950s and early 1960s to the hard-edge and geometric abstraction of the late 1960s and the 1970s, when she developed her preferred motif—the arrow. Since that time, her work has moved toward a new form of gesture through the oblique, in which the electrifying power of colour and dynamic composition are constants. An artist of exemplary energy, she has worked with a wide variety of media and techniques, including oil, acrylic, casein, pastel, airbrushing and screen-printing. A number of large-scale outdoor murals that she executed in various locations in Canada and the United States between 1965 and 1980 further cemented her renown.

Rita Letendre is represented by Montréal’s Galerie Simon Blais. Since 2001, when it presented the exhibition Les éléments, accompanied by a bilingual catalogue, the gallery has held regular solo exhibitions of the artist’s work, which has also been showcased in recent years in a spring 2003 Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec retrospective and the 2009 group show Femmes artistes — La conquête d’un espace, 1900-1965, among others. In addition, Rita Letendre’s work has been featured in the exhibition The Automatiste Revolution: Montreal 1941–1960, organized by Markham, Ontario’s Varley Art Gallery, where it was presented in 2009 before travelling to Buffalo, New York’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 2010.

She passed away in November 2021.

References

ASSELIN, Hedwidge, Rita Letendre : Les éléments/The Elements, Montréal, Éditions Simon Blais, 2001, 64 pp.

LETENDRE, Rita, and Sandra PAIKOWSKY, Rita Letendre: The Montreal Years, 1953–1963, Montréal, Concordia Art Gallery, 1989, 80 pp.

NINACS, Anne-Marie, Rita Letendre : Aux couleurs du jour, Québec City, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2003, 160 pp.

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