Since Rita Letendre’s first exhibition with the Automatistes in 1952 her paintings have often featured a headstrong, upward reach – a telling visual metaphor for the artist’s own restless sense of self-discovery. Cosmic Storm is an example of this restlessness as it is a marked departure from Letendre’s previous works: there are hints of the colour and energy that appear in the heavy impasto and expressively painted works that make up much of her career but none of the control of her hard-edge abstraction. The tension created between the massive dark void and the crawling streaks of colour that move in from each edge of the canvas is palpable. It is, at the same moment, obliteration and creation.
