WYKI, 1975

Private Collection, Ontario

Joan Murray, “Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century”, Toronto, 1999, pages 99 and 122 Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, “Rita Letendre: Fire and Light,” Art Gallery of Ontario, 2017, pages 17-19

As one of the few women artists at the centre of abstract art in Canada, Rita Letendre holds an important position in Canadian art history, having produced some of the most innovative examples of post-war art. During the 1960s, after a large mural commission at the University of California, the artist moved towards hard-edge abstraction, playing with flattened planes of colour and the use of an airbrush. Letendre’s large canvases of the 1970s explore her fascination with depicting speed and vibration. The use of the airbrush technique, combined with sharp wedges or arrows that cut across the image plane, are characteristic of her work from the decade. In “WYKI” a black ‘arrow’ shoots downward across the canvas, dividing a quasi-symmetrical order of white, beige, orange and fuschia bands. These colourful bands vary in width and paint application; some of them are sharply contrasted while others blend softly into one another, as a result of the airbrush. Wanda Nanibush writes: “The use of an airbrush gave her considerable control over texture and coverage so she could execute pure, flat, evenly distributed arrows. The airbrush, coupled with tape, allowed for the colours to be butted up against each other in perfect lines.” Joan Murray discusses these important works produced by the artist during the 1970s, including “WYKI”, stating: “Rita Letendre explored colour, line and composition through the use of forceful chevrons that cut across the composition diagonally or horizontally from one corner of the painting to the other. She obtained extra energy from applying narrow ridges of contrasting colour to the borders of each ray.” The sharp lines of bright colour all converge to a single point at the tip of the black ‘arrow’ in these works, magnifying and concentrating the energy.