Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal
Private Collection, Stratford, Ontario
Private Collection, Toronto
Beginning as an Automatiste painter in the 1950s, Rita Letendre was influenced by Paul-Émile Borduas’ revolutionary non-figurative paintings of the period. Taking the lead from the Montreal modern painters of the time, Letendre became a leader in the colourist
movement. Using a variety of applicators, Letendre fluctuated between brush and spatula to apply thick layers of paint to achieve varying textures on the canvas, always mindful of the gesture of the artist’s hand moving the paint.
As the Automatistes and its affiliates began to abandon their commitment to spontaneity in favour of control and structure, Letendre painted into the mid-1960s maintaining a gestural abstraction. Dramatic and evocative, “Envol’s” bright yellow form curves upward into the left side of the canvas, creating energy that emerges from the immersive dark background. The title of the piece translates to “flight”, perhaps alluding to the upward-moving energy emerging from the base of the canvas. Letendre kept a fairly consistent palette of dramatic colours, often with large swaths of black, until the mid-1960s when she made the decisive shift into geometric compositions.
