Reading Music Exhibition Public Opening Friday November 27th at 6 PM
Galerie Sara Lily Perez presents paintings by the American artist Ellen Banks (1938-2017) from her estate in Berlin. For more than three decades, Banks translated musical scores – from Chopin, Bartók and Clara Schumann to Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington – into colour and form.
“I often say that a musician takes the score and makes a performance, while I take the score and make a painting.” – Ellen Banks
From 1981, Banks worked from the written music rather than from listening. Bars, keys and the shape of the notation become grids, fields of colour and rhythms. Many titles name their source exactly: Monk m22 pg. 29 refers to bar 22 on page 29 of the score, Chopin #54 Scherzo m17 E to bar 17.
The exhibition brings together around two dozen works, mainly from the late 1980s and the 2010s: encaustic paintings in which wax and pigment carry the structure of the music, the round canvases of the Rondo series, large mixed-media works, and small works on wood.
Opening: Friday 27 November 2026, 6-9 pm, with live music at 7 pm.
Press preview: Wednesday 25 November 2026, 11 am, walkthrough with Sara Lily Perez.
The artist
Ellen Banks was born in Boston in 1938 and first trained as a classical pianist. She studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she taught painting from 1974 to 1996. In 1981–82 she studied in Amsterdam with Hans L. C. Jaffé, the historian of De Stijl. She lived in New York, Amsterdam and Paris.
Her work is held in collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art. Her awards include the Prix de Paris (1967), a Ford Foundation grant (1979), and support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Radcliffe College (Bunting Fellowship).
The estate
Under the terms of her will, her estate came to Berlin almost in its entirety. The Ellen Banks Archive in Spandau has been researching it since 2022. Following the retrospective “mood indigo” at ZAK Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst, Zitadelle Spandau (2025), a new chapter emerges with “Reading Music,” as the estate presents a focused selection marking their first exhibition and representation in the west of the city, in collaboration with the Ellen Banks Archive and Galerie Sara Lily Perez. A programme of talks in December and January will be announced separately.
learn more about the exhibition at https://www.saralilyperez.com/exhibitions/reading-music
@galerie-sara-lily-perez
Leave a comment.