BIOGRAPHY:
Rita Letendre (1928–2021) was a pioneering Canadian artist of Indigenous heritage, renowned for her abstract art, hard-edge paintings, and monumental murals. A major figure in postwar Canadian art, she developed a powerful and luminous body of work that spanned more than six decades of creation.
Through a deeply intuitive practice, Rita Letendre explored movement, light, and energy through color. Her work evolved from gestural abstraction inspired by the Automatist movement toward geometric and hard-edge abstraction, where her celebrated arrow forms and diagonal lines emerged. Her dynamic compositions express a constant tension between spontaneity, emotion, and structure.
Inspired by the creative freedom of the Les Automatistes and influenced by her Abenaki roots, she developed a singular visual language in which color conveys intensity, memory, and transformation. Light, ever-present in her work, acts as a force of transition, momentum, and resilience.
