Ellen Banks (1938–2017) was an African American artist from New York whose abstract works are deeply rooted in her passion for music. In both her paintings and three-dimensional works, Banks translated written musical scores into color, structure, and rhythm. Since 2022, a team has been dedicated to preserving and researching her artistic legacy. This exhibition offers insight into this archival work and serves as a tribute to an extraordinary artist.
With a comprehensive retrospective, the ZAK Center for Contemporary Art presents the painterly work of African American artist Ellen Banks (1938–2017).
Under the title “mood indigo”, the exhibition brings together around 100 works from nearly all creative phases of the artist, along with documents and photographs from her personal estate. Starting from figurative beginnings, Banks developed a free abstract oeuvre in the 1970s that increasingly explored the structural analysis of music — specifically musical compositions.
Ellen Banks lived and worked in cities such as Amsterdam and Paris, and until her death in 2017, in New York, where she was part of a vibrant art and music scene. Her enthusiasm for music, particularly jazz, began to decisively shape her painting in the 1980s. Using written musical scores as a foundation, she developed an independent painterly method for transforming notes into color. This resulted in images that appear constructivist and concrete at first glance but are, in fact, painted musical notations. Banks examined and questioned the order and rhythm of music, translating it into a precise visual language that explored the visual relationships of written music on both formal and chromatic levels:
“I often say that a musician takes the score and makes a performance, while I take the score and make a painting.”
Using a variety of techniques, Banks created an extensive body of work that, due to a testamentary provision, was transferred almost in its entirety to Berlin. In recent years, this oeuvre has been reviewed, documented, and analyzed by a young curatorial team. Thanks to this meticulous research, a comprehensive picture of an exceptional artist has emerged—one positioned at the intersection of music and visual art. Through archival materials, notes, sketches, and photographs from her estate, new perspectives on Ellen Banks’ work are revealed—between preservation and reinterpretation, between remembrance and transmission. This is a vital step toward making Ellen Banks’ artistic legacy visible and embedding her work in the cultural memory.
On June 1 at 3:30 pm there will be a talk with Kenneth Hartvigsen, a friend of Ellen Banks.
Curator tours will take place on June 1, July 6 and August 3 at 2 pm. On 26.6., 17.7. and 14.8. the curator’s tours will take place at 6 pm.
Curated by Mia-Phyllis Liefer, Maxim Marais, Oliver Gudzowski, and Patricia Bonsaver
In collaboration with Galerie Spandow / Katrin Germershausen
