Exhibitions by Rita Letendre

Rita Letendre

Chromatic Vibrations - Original Prints
March 2, 2024 to April 13, 2024

Multiple artists

Art Toronto 2023 — Booth A40
Oct. 26, 2023 to Oct. 29, 2023

Rita Letendre

Offsite — Light Forces: Rita Letendre and Fred Eversley — Nicolas Vassel Gallery, NYC
Nov. 10, 2022 to Dec. 17, 2022

Multiple artists

Art Totonto 2022 — Booth A45
Oct. 27, 2022 to Oct. 30, 2022

Rita Letendre

A Tribute to Rita Letendre
Feb. 19, 2022 to March 26, 2022

Multiple artists

Papier 2021
Nov. 26, 2021 to Nov. 28, 2021

Multiple artists

Hard Copies: Prints Done the Old-Fashioned Way
June 26, 2021 to Sept. 11, 2021

Multiple artists

ZAZOOM!
July 4, 2020 to Aug. 8, 2020

Multiple artists

Toronto Art Fair 2019
Oct. 24, 2019 to Oct. 27, 2019

Multiple artists

Depuis 30 ans - Maintenant
May 11, 2019 to June 29, 2019

Multiple artists

Papier19
April 25, 2019 to April 28, 2019

Multiple artists

Splendeurs et Microcosmes
April 6, 2019 to May 4, 2019

Rita Letendre

Fulgurance d'une trajectoire
Jan. 23, 2016 to Feb. 27, 2016

Multiple artists

Re :
Nov. 18, 2015 to Dec. 23, 2015

Multiple artists

Tribu moderne
July 11, 2015 to Aug. 29, 2015

Multiple artists

1989 – Une exposition improbable
June 18, 2014 to July 26, 2014

Multiple artists

Papier calque 1
April 18, 2014 to May 3, 2014

Rita Letendre

Peintures 2003-2013
Jan. 22, 2014 to March 8, 2014

Multiple artists

L'écho des plasticiens
Feb. 13, 2013 to March 20, 2013

Multiple artists

Débuts
Jan. 18, 2012 to Feb. 18, 2012

Rita Letendre

Mysterious Day
May 4, 2011 to June 4, 2011

Multiple artists

Coups de coeur 2e état
Aug. 5, 2009 to Sept. 5, 2009

Multiple artists

Coups de coeur – 1er état
Jan. 28, 2009 to March 7, 2009

Rita Letendre

Les éléments
Nov. 5, 2008 to Dec. 6, 2008

Multiple artists

Montréal Paris New York
June 7, 2006 to July 8, 2006

Rita Letendre

Petits formats
June 22, 2005 to Sept. 7, 2005

Rita Letendre

Ode à Isis
Nov. 26, 2003 to Feb. 7, 2004

Rita Letendre

Les éléments
May 9, 2001 to June 30, 2001

About the artist

Rita Letendre

Rita Letendre

Rita Letendre was born in Drummondville in 1928. 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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