Sirius, 1963

Galerie Camille Hébert, Montreal Heffel Fine Art, auction, Vancouver, 28 May 2016, lot 217 Private Collection, Montreal

Guy Viau, ‘La peinture moderne au Canada français’ in “Rita Letendre”, Gallery Gevik, Toronto, 2010, page 4

Rita Letendre’s work of the early 1960s exudes the confidence of an artist who has earned both commercial success and critical acclaim. By this point in her career, Letendre had won significant prizes, recently participated in a travelling exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada and held a solo exhibition at the Musée des beaux- arts in Montreal. In 1962, Letendre received a grant from the Canada Council and travelled extensively through Europe and Israel. Letendre’s paintings of the period were exuberant, gestural abstractions influenced by Paul-Èmile Borduas, Franz Kline and others. Using palette knives and spatulas, she created rich and luscious impasto surfaces. Her work often featured dark swirls of oil paint sharply contrasted with areas of vivid colour. The modest scale of this work from 1963 creates tension between dynamics of expansion and containment. Titled after the brightest star in the night sky, “Sirius” evokes cosmic forces and transcendence. Writer Guy Viau commented, “The painter Rita Letendre is fiery, but as thoughtful as she is passionate; her gesture as rapid as her reflection is deliberate... These works have the freshness of a beginning, the freshness of morning, suggesting natural cataclysms, or maybe planets colliding. As a woman painter, Rita Letendre incarnates power.” Sirius exemplifies the late period of Letendre’s gestural abstracts. Only a few years later, the artist would go on to decisively shift her painting practice to structured, geometric works.