Rita Letendre Canadian, 1928-2021

Of Indigenous Abenaki and Québécois descent, Rita Letendre was a Canadian abstractionist known for her large-scale ‘arrow’ paintings. First exhibiting within the male-dominated art movement of Les Automatistes in Montreal, Letendre sought to break away from the group, seeking her own visual identity. Upon travelling to Long Beach, California for a large-scale mural commission, the traditional methods of machismo-impasto surfaces were deemed impractical. Influenced by the California Light & Space movement, Rita employed airbrush acrylics to build luminous, iridescent fields of colour. Making titular notes to the passing of light through space, critic’s suggest that such references may be nod to her Indigenous heritage. Being of Abenaki descent, from the Wabanaki confederacy, often referred to as People of the Dawnland. Today, Letendre’s work is widely collected by Canadian institutions such as the National Gallery of Canada and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, but recent international support, such as the solo presentation at the Rubell Museum which opened in December 2025 are pivotal in her introduction to broader audiences.