Sold for: $76,050

PROVENANCE
Here & Now Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Sandra Paikowsky, Rita Letendre: The Montreal Years, 1953 - 1963, Concordia Art Gallery, 1989, page 6

EXHIBITED
Women's Committee of the Art Gallery of Toronto, Fifteenth Annual Exhibition and Sale of Contemporary Canadian Painting, Sculpture and Graphics, November 1 - 19, 1961, catalogue #89

The catalogue that accompanied the 1989 exhibition Rita Letendre: The Montreal Years, 1953 - 1963 provides us with an informative and enlightening chronicle of the career of a young artist striving for recognition during the most revolutionary era of post-war Canadian painting. Sandra Paikowsky sums up Letendre’s accomplishments when she writes, “Her first decade of work embodies both the history of an artist finding her own voice and a reflection of the aims and ambitions of Montreal abstract painting.” Paul-Émile Borduas’s early encouragement, including for her figurative work, gave Letendre the confidence to develop her own approach to abstraction, so well represented by the lush expressionism of Mandragore. Here, the smaller shapes of concentrated colour in her late-1958 to 1959 paintings have expanded to become the building blocks of a dynamic construction. The striking application of pigments - a palette of black, olive green, ochre and white, spiked with a shock of bright blue - is unique to Letendre’s oeuvre, and justifiably celebrated for its emotive impact.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars