Zita Leutgeb



Zita Leutgeb (*1998, Vienna) is a spatial designer, curator and researcher with a background in architecture and dance. She holds a Master’s degree in Architecture, Urbanism, and Building Sciences from Delft University of Technology. Her thesis Bodies, Movement and Architecture: Towards Physical Resonances in Space bridged her experience as a trained ballet dancer with spatial design, exploring bodily resonances towards urban architectures in Rotterdam, NL. In her artistic research, the moving body weaves threads between art, architecture, body politics, queer theory and everyday practices.


© Antonia Leicht


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Selected works
(click to view)
  1. Five Friends: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, Twombly
  2. Bodies, Movement & Architecture
  3. Dance Notation Drawings
  4. Measured, Performative, Open Body







1. Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, 
Japser Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly



Location: Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Year: 2024-2025
Category: Scenography, Curatorial Assistance


Exhibition Poster © Thomas Spallek
Performance program activating the exhibition stage, which was designed to host dancers and musicians surrounded by artworks of the five artists.



images and plans © Zita Leutgeb

Scenographic elements ranging from dance floors, stage curtains and partially open atelier walls, create both performative spaces and intimate atelier settings, in which art and personal life flow into one another. As Robert Rauschenberg expressed in 1959: “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in that gap between the two.”

About the exhibition:

The exhibition Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly tells the story of an influential yet often overlooked network of five prominent artists. While each of these artists has received considerable recognition, their friendship and the strongly influential relationships, both artistic and romantic, between them have gone largely unexamined.

As individuals and as a group, these artists played a central role in postwar art, making decisive contributions to the history of art, music, and dance through their interdisciplinary approaches. Today, their work continues to inspire new generations of artists. With its focus on the interactions between these five artists, the exhibition also reflects on the experience of being a gay artist in the 1950s, providing new insights into the dynamics of postwar art in the United States and beyond.

This is the first time that Cage’s theoretical influence on Rauschenberg and Twombly, the stage sets by Rauschenberg and Johns for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and the creative dialogue between Twombly, Rauschenberg, and Johns have been the subject of a major exhibition. The performative and collaborative dimension of their practices exemplifies their shared conception of a nonhierarchical, multipolar, and anti-imperialist society.

Yilmaz Dziewior, Director of the Museum Ludwig, comments, “The exhibition Five Friends holds particular significance for Museum Ludwig, as it presents seminal artists from the collection through new lenses. Its interdisciplinary, queer, and nature-oriented perspectives on the work of these five artists highlight their renewed relevance—especially in today’s increasingly restrictive political climate.”
(text from e-flux)

This exhibition has been organized in cooperation with the Museum Brandhorst in Munich.

Curators: Yilmaz Dziewior and Achim Hochdörfer with Arthur Fink, Kerstin Renerig and Leonore Spemann

Exhibition Design: ARCH+, Zita Leutgeb, Arno Löbbecke, Anh-Linh Ngo

Link to the website of Museum Ludwig
Link to e-flux