Rita Letendre, Ixtepac, 1977, acrylic on canvas, 77” x 63”
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Rita
Letendre is undisputedly in revival mode with a solo exhibition last year at the
Art Gallery of Ontario (Fire and Light) and a subsequent national
tour. Following that but long in the planning is a more micro-focused yet
widely-contextualizing exhibition of this ninety-year old painter’s work curated
by Adam Lauder, currently one of the few scholars solidly versed in Canadian
Modernism.
Lauder’s exhibition focuses on a series
of Letendre’s commissioned murals that have now disappeared or have been
neglected in Toronto and California. The mural projects are
clearly referenced by two large-scale acrylic paintings: Sunrise II (1973,
acrylic on canvas, 38” x 240”) and Ixtepac (1977, acrylic on canvas, 77”
x 63”) along with printed matter documenting their
commissioning and making.
Beginning
by acknowledging possible references to her indigenous heritage (arrow and
sunrise imagery), Lauder’s accompanying essay notes a range of influences from
Snow, to Borduas, to the Plasticien movement. Presenting such a broad base is a
wise strategy when considering a maverick artist who was in all ways anomalous:
an indigenous woman rising from the all-male Automatistes and working alongside
but not quite in tune with more men: the hard-edged Plasticiens. She softened
their hard masculine edges. Simultaneously, she enlivened their sombre geometry
with her characteristic diagonal bands of vibrant, pulsating colour.
One missing influence though in Lauder’s otherwise thorough analysis is what
was then called commercial art, an influence especially noticeable in Letendre’s
post-1970 work. Specifically, I’m referring to the “super graphics” of the
early seventies, those groovy, snazzy colour ribbons installed as architectural
murals that were painted locally during Letendre's time by Yale-trained
architect Barrie
Briscoe’s firm Super Graffitti, where
incidentally, Toronto's most noteworthy hard-edged painter, Jaan Poldaas, briefly
worked. Letendre’s murals do seem as comfortable in architectural space as they
would have in the David Mirvish or Isaacs galleries, the two
abstract painting spaces in Toronto at the time. In fact, in 1971, Letendre
began using a then staple commercial mural and illustration tool: the airbrush.
The glaring Tide© detergent package orange in Sunrise II highlights the
resultant graphic design aesthetic.
Straddling
graphic art and what is Zen-inspired abstraction is a challenging balancing act, and Letendre
sometimes falls into overly-regimented design that consciously illustrates
rather than spontaneously embodies the spiritualism she seeks her paintings to
contain. The included Ixtepec is not one of these. Its gentle fades between
colours juxtaposed with a centrally-placed orange-blue arrow shape form an evocative
contrast between subtle meditation and bold graphic impact.
Lauder
clearly illustrates why Letendre deserves further historic mention in Canada. Surely,
it’s a sign of systematic sexism and racism combined that Letendre's name is
all that is mentioned of her in Dennis Reid’s seminal A Concise History of
Canadian Painting, which in this case has taken the adjective describing “history”
in its title a tad too seriously.
And
Lauder's exhibition is a welcome project in urban as well as Modernist
archaeology. It stands not only as a particularly significant contribution to the
reintroduction of an artist and a specific body of work forgotten in the
Toronto art world, but also as a performative metaphor for this
developer-frenzied, cash-blinded city, which wantonly demolishes its
architectural heritage.
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