Winter Solstice, 1980

Gallery Moos, Calgary Private Collection, Toronto

Joan Murray, “Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century”, Toronto, 1999, page 99 Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, “Rita Letendre: Fire and Light”, Toronto, 2017, page 17

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 shifted away from gestural abstraction toward hard-edge abstraction, playing with flattened planes of colour and the use of an airbrush. In the 1970s and 80s, the use of an airbrush became an integral element to Letendre’s work. 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.” This new technique allowed Letendre to have a smooth sense of control over her application of paint to further the formal elements of line and colour in her works. “Winter Solstice” is composed of airbrushed horizontal bands of red, grey and blue of varying widths, contrasted with very thin and sharp arrows in pink and black in the lower portion of the canvas. Joan Murray discusses how these works explore Letendre’s fascination with speed, 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.”