Attributed to Rita Letendre, no coa, private collection, medium: pastel, measurements: 21"hx28"w framed, mint condition, Biography: Rita Letendre, OC OQ OOnt RCA LL. D. was a Canadian painter, muralist, and printmaker associated with Les Automatistes and the Plasticiens. She was an Officer of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Governor General's Award. Letendre was born the eldest of seven children to Anne-Marie Ledoux and Héliodore Letendre in Drummondville, Quebec. She was of Abenaki and Québécois descent.At age 19, while working at a restaurant in mid-town Montreal, a patron saw sketches she was working on when business became quiet and was struck by her talent.Practically insisting that she enroll in the École des beaux-arts de Montréal (of which Letendre had never heard), he picked her up at home, took her to the school and stood at the bottom of the steps ensuring she entered, then continued to stand there long enough for her to be asked if she was enrolling – the answer was "Yes".In the late 1950s, having internalized the ideas of the Plasticiens, she abandoned the confines of geometric works and began studying the ideas of Zen and Confucius; these ideas began to translate into her paintings characterized by lines and strokes in black and white. She was also struck by the work of the Abstract Expressionists in New York and in particular, impressed by the work of Franz Kline. 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.After several questionnaires and a practical exam, she was accepted.It was there that she met friends Gilles Groulx and Ulysse Comtois, who was to be her partner for over 15 years. There she worked in an academic atmosphere for a year and a half. In 1950, she went to view an art show "L’Exposition des Rebelles" (despite being largely condemned by her professors) and befriended the show organizer Jean-Paul Mousseau – this was her introduction to the circle of Paul-Émile Borduas and Les Automatistes.Soon thereafter, she left the École des beaux-arts de Montréal.