Rita Letendre

Rita Letendre (1928–2021), born in Drummondville, Quebec, of Abenaki descent. She studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal in 1948, where the rigid methodology and conservative environment was ill-suited to her interest in creative exploration. She exhibited with the Automatists in Montreal from 1952 to 1955, and was included in the pivotal exhibition La matière chante, organized by artist Paul-Émile Borduas, and Espace at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. By the late 1950s, she had begun to exhibit in New York, at both Parma Gallery and Canada House, and her work was included in The Third Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). In 1960, the NGC organized the exhibition Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal, which travelled to other venues in Canada and solidified Letendre's place in the forefront of Canadian non-figurative abstraction. Letendre won numerous important painting prizes in Montreal including the Young Painters Prize in 1959 and the Rodolphe de Repentigny Prize in 1960, as well as the Province of Quebec Award in 1962. In Canada, her recognition is wide, and her international reputation reaches to Japan and France. She was an officer of the Order of Canada and was awarded the Governor General's Award for Visual Arts in 2010 and the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.