Paul-Émile Borduas (the main force behind the manifesto Refus Global) was probably the greatest influence to Letendre’s life as a painter – he believed self-knowledge was the key to producing highly personal work.

Eventually her work was noticed, most notably by artist/art critic Rodolphe de Repentigny (the major force behind the Plasticiens, who espoused the philosophies of Piet Mondrian and the virtues of geometric form in art).

Many of these elements and themes would be revisited in the works that soon followed, increasing in gestural quality and characterized with heavy impasto with a palette knife or spatula.

This was a productive period and she sent large groups of works home; the beginnings of her hard edge style also began, where more well defined masses or wedges would evoke vibration, movement and collisions.

[10] In Italy she showed at Spoleto, won a gold medal at Piccola Europa in Sassaferator, and met Russian-born sculptor Kosso Eloul.

[9] The second, was the opportunity to learn printmaking, lithography and eventually silk screen, a technique conducive to hard-edge shapes.

She was also commissioned to design a huge coloured skylight for the ceiling of Glencairn (TTC) subway station in Toronto entitled Joy; it was eventually removed at Letendre’s request because the panels had faded after being exposed to many years of sunlight.

[17] However, "Joy" was reengineered and reinstalled in Glencarin Station in 2014 and cast a warm, orange glow over commuters to this day [18] In the early 1970s, she began to soften some of the edges in her works,[15] a trend that would continue the next few years; this resulted in a myriad of horizontal landscape compositions often containing a few or even only one thin hard edge line.

She began experimenting with pastels in 1980 and produced a series in 1982 inspired by the nearby Nevada landscape while staying with her husband in Beverly Hills as he recovered from heart surgery.

[19] Pastels and the techniques she developed with them afforded her an opportunity to create a soft edge effect in landscape like compositions using a completely different medium.

By 1995, she worked in heavier oils again, abandoning the airbrush completely, and controlled her gestural compositions with brush, palette knife and her hands.

Rita Letendre’s large oil Reflet d’Eden (1961), hammered down at C$375,000 ($296,000) at the Heffel Auction, June 1st 2022.

[6] There, she thrived in a more relaxed atmosphere where she could play, read, pick flowers, take boat rides and more importantly, escape her turbulent home life.

[4] In 1941, the family moved back to Drummondville where she enrolled in her first year of high school but before she could return for a second year, the family moved to downtown Montreal[41] and Letendre had to stay home to take care of her five younger siblings while both of her parents took jobs for the war effort.

This period of her life was a blessing in disguise; she continued drawing in the evenings, she was able to devour books as fast as she could get her hands on them, she discovered Opera on the radio which became a lifelong love, and she discovered famous master works of art in books at the library which she had heard about on the radio.

[4] By 1946 she was desperate to escape her family duties; first taking a factory job, then working as a restaurant cashier, she left home to live with her boyfriend with whom she had a son, Jacques.