Remous, 1964

Galerie de Montréal, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto

Beginning as an Automatiste painter in the 1950s, Rita Letendre was influenced by Paul-Émile Borduas’s revolutionary non-figurative paintings of the period. Taking the lead from the Montreal modern painters of the time, the artist 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. The 1960s was a decade of well-deserved recognition for Letendre’s work, beginning with a solo exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1961. In 1962, Letendre travelled to Europe, visiting Paris, Rome and then Israel. As the Automatiste group and its affiliates began to abandon their commitment to spontaneity in favour of a more controlled and deliberate structure, Letendre chose to maintain the impulsive and expressive brushstrokes in her work. “Remous”, with its fitting title which translates to “Swirl”, highlights this tendency in her work of the early 1960s - evident in the spontaneous and gestural black and red strokes. Letendre kept a fairly consistent palette of dramatic colours, often with large masses of black, until the mid-1960s when she took a decisive shift into geometric compositions.