The bold dashes of colour present in the recent works of Rita Letendre recall her apprenticeship at the Ecole de Beaux-arts, during which Paul-Emile Borduas, Jean-Paul Mousseau and Marcelle Ferron were in the midst of their revolution, distributing pamphlets announcing where their paintings could be seen. It was at these stimulating exhibitions that Letendre discovered the possibilities of her own art.  "Then we discovered our contemporaries,” she explains.   “People with whom we would develop our talents. For me there was Ulysse Comptois . . . Gilles Groux, the filmmaker among others. I was convinced that I was going to revolutionize the universe, and all my friends thought the same about themselves."

Since her first exhibitions with the Automatistes in 1952 and 1953, many of Letendre's paintings have featured a headstrong, upward reach - a telling visual metaphor for the artist's own restless sense of self-discovery. An early solo show at the Here and Now Gallery in Toronto was reviewed by Robert Fulford, who remarked how Letendre "works in the roughest, widest of strokes, she builids up the paint in thick crusts and her colour is often used violently . . . the blunt composition works perfectly as an expression of intransigent and genuinely original personality.

It is not surprising that Letendre, forever in search of new forms of art-making, has painted in many different countries, including, Paris, Italy, Israel, Spain, Belgium, Germany, New York and Los Angeles.   Possessing an insatiable hunger for new experiences, she describes her art as "mass and force in action . . . the force of life is marvelous to me. We see the same force in the sea, the sun, all around us. It is the same strength that makes human beings dream - to want to go to the moon - to accomplish the impossible."

The works of Rita Letendre can be found in many public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, Musée d'Art Contemporain Montreal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée du Quebec and the Vancouver Art Gallery.